Microfiche
by stopquotingmonstersincatme
Summary: Katherine "Kate" Steele is a calm, collected, smart woman who loves her job as the CCPD's Forensic Photographer. Her friendship with Barry Allen is probably the icing on the cake. After the Particle Accelerator Incident, Kate's whole world turns upside down and inside out, and she has to learn to adjust. Quickly.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Hello and welcome to my story Microfiche! I've been pondering writing this story for a few months now. After watching the season 2 premiere, I just couldn't take it anymore. I had to write this. I haven't seen too many Barry/OC stories, so I thought I'd have a crack at it. This story will be canon with the tv show more than the comics (even though I wanna be sneaky and stick in some comic characters, *cough, cough* Wally West and Doralla Kon). There's gonna be a lot of big time skips in this chapter, desculpe.**

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 **Disclaimer: I don't own anything Flash related. At all. Except for this story and my OC, Kate.**

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CH 1

"Tilt your head in my direction just a tad. Ah, yes! There. That's perfect thank you." I held a camera delicately, inching it closer and closer to my eye, lens focused on my subject model. My project partner and I were out in the quad of Central City University completing our assignment for our photojournalism class. We were supposed to shoot throughout the day for a final presentation that was due in a couple of weeks.

"Do you think we'll have enough time to go to the lab and edit these in time?" My partner Ana asked as she moved naturally while I took shot after shot. "I mean, we do have three other classes that we have to do projects for. We might just barely get this in on time."

I took the final frame, then lowered the camera. "Relax, Ana. We've got this. Don't stress over the deadline and everything will come to us naturally." The tension in her shoulders fizzled out at my words. I smiled at her as she cocked her hip playfully.

"How are you so calm? I mean, you're a sophomore in college! Aren't you supposed to be pulling your hair out over midterms like everyone else is?"

I smiled even wider, "See, the difference between me and everyone is that I actually pay attention in class. So I don't have to jam a bunch of information into my head in a week." Ana lightly snatched the camera from me, muttering in Spanish. She looked at the photos I had taken, her brown hair in a curtain over her face. Looking back up at me, she praised my work.

"These are great! The shots aren't too tight or too loose, and you found the perfect angle for lighting. Okay, now your turn." I groaned reluctantly, trudging over to another random spot in the quad. I hated having my picture taken, but it was a requirement that we both be a part of the photo set. I pondered sitting on the grass, but thought better of it and I just signaled to Ana to follow me.

I tucked a lock of wavy red hair behind me ear, looking back at Ana to check if she was still following me. She was, so I continued. After walking around for a while, I got bored and walked backwards, looking at the camera. I didn't think anything of my safety or where I was walking, so I kept taking big steps.

"Kate, look out!" I saw Ana's eyes grow wide as I felt myself fall backwards as someone ran into me. I sucked in a huge breath as I gasped, preparing myself to hit the ground, crack my head open, and die.

Okay, so I was being a bit melodramatic.

I was stopped by a pair of lithe, but firm arms around my waist and shoulder, catching me and saving me from my fall. Looking up, I saw a gaping face staring down at me. Short brown hair stood in a swirl on top of his head. A pair of wide green eyes scanned my body, checking for injuries I'd presume. Then they locked onto my brown ones and I was frozen.

"Hi. Nice catch." I breathed out, referring to his saving my skull from cracking open and my brains splattering down the staircase. He blinked once, twice. I heard a faint clicking sound, but the sound instantly went to the back of my mind as time seemed to start again. My mysterious savior pulled me back into a standing position and started rambling.

"I am so sorry! I was just-I'm late to my biochem class and I looked down to make sure that I had the right textbook with me because Professor Larson would skin me alive if I didn't. It was only one second, I swear, I really didn't mean to run into yo—" He was cut off by my light chuckle. I looked up into his eyes, becoming very endeared as his slightly awkward demeanor.

I smiled encouragingly, "It's totally fine. I get that panicked rushed feeling sometimes too. It's super normal. Plus, if it makes you feel any better, Larson's just miffed that his third wife makes him go to church now." I spotted a peek of a laugh line, so I knew that I had succeeded in calming him down a little.

He suddenly stuck his hand out, "I'm Barry. Barry Allen."

I took his hand and shook it. "Kate Steele. Don't you have a class to get to?" Barry suddenly jumped at my reminder and gathered himself again. He started to run off yelling mid-stride,

"It's nice to meet you, Kate!"

I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled right back. "You too!" I watched his figure grow smaller as he ran to the Math and Science building.

"Well, that was entertaining." Ana said, walking up to my side, camera in hand. I looked at her and spotted the smirk right away.

I rolled my eyes, "What now?" She giggled.

"He was kinda cute. You should ask him out." I scoffed as she waggled her eyebrows.

"Okay, stop trying to set me up with every guy that's nice to me! You have a problem."

"Whatever you say…" Ana singsonged as she started walking away from me. "Come on, let's finish this portion of the story for today."

But before I went to follow her, I looked down at the ground to see a stack of papers with the top of the stack entitled _The Magnetic and Chemical Properties of Hemoglobin_.

With Barry's name in the header.

* * *

After doing some investigating, the next day I walked into the lobby of Brennar Hall. I tapped a blond boy on the shoulder, using my sweetest voice, hoping that he wouldn't get too angry at me for interrupting his study time.

"Do you know which room Barry Allen is in? He dropped his paper earlier." The guy who I was speaking to had nodded quickly. He started to gather his stuff.

Getting up and putting his bag on his shoulder, he put a hand out towards a hallway. "Yeah, he's my roommate. I'll take you to him." I smiled gratefully at him.

We turned down a few halls and soon arrived to a dorm labeled 232. The guy who led me there pulled out his key and unlocked the door, revealing a room covered in papers and textbooks. Somehow through the mess, I spotted Barry sitting at his desk.

"You have a visitor, Allen." He didn't look back as he re-read a paragraph out of his textbook.

"Joe, I told you, I'm fine on the mac and cheese. I don't need any more than nesseca—Oh, hi!" Barry had turned around halfway through his sentence and did a double take at seeing me at the door instead of whoever Joe was. I waved.

Holding up his paper, I stated my business. "I'm hoping this wasn't too important." Barry's face lit up at seeing the papers in my hand as he leaped up to grab it.

"Oh thank God. Where did you find this? I've been looking for it everywhere, that's why the room's such a mess."

I put my hands in my jean pockets, rocking back and forth lightly. "It probably dropped out of your bag when you ran into me." He nodded understandingly.

"Yeah, I need to be more careful. Thanks." We stood in sort of an awkward silence for a moment, then I bursted out with what I've wanted to say since I read through the paper.

"I like your paper. It's very informative." Barry nodded as if that were the normal thing everyone says to him. "Although you did miss that another possible mutation of hemoglobin is sickle cell anemia." Barry give me a surprised look, then facepalmed.

"Of course! That's what I was missing. It's only a rough draft, thank goodness, and I've had this feeling that I'd forgotten something on this paper ever since I wrote it." He scribbled something on his paper, then paused and stared at me, "You know biochemistry?" I nodded.

"Yeah, that's how I knew Larson. It's probably one of the few things I know really well from that class."

Barry looked down sheepishly, "Oh, that's right."

"Hey, I heard that STAR Labs is developing plans for a particle accelerator. And they have a mini-physical model of it that they've released to the public… You wanna go look at the plans?" My voice sort of dwindled down as I became more and more insecure at the prospect of him saying no.

His face brightened up again and he nodded, "Absolutely! Let's go." He grabbed his jacket and guided me out of the door. Once we reached the end of campus grounds, we were already conversing as if we'd been friends forever.

"—and the greatest part of this accelerator is definitely gonna be the…"

"Diode-capacitor voltage multiplier." We said at the same time. Pausing and looking at each other for a second, we started laughing at the coincidence.

"Barry Allen, I think this is gonna be the start to a beautiful friendship."

* * *

 _TWO YEARS LATER_

"Congratulations, Class of 2013! You did it!"

All of us on the main floor cheered, holding up our fake-degrees. Our family and friends applauded us from the bleachers surrounding us. We switched our tassels and started jumping up and down in joy. The recessional music started playing, so we exited the arena where we had the ceremony.

"Katherine!" I spotted my Dad and sister who called out for me. I walked to them and hugged my father immediately.

"Oh, I'm so proud of you, my sweet girl. Your mother would be too." A tear fell at the memory of my mother. I lost her my senior year of high school to a long battle with breast cancer. I almost dropped out because of the toll it took on me, but my remaining family kept pushing me to finish my education.

I smiled at him, turning to my sister and hugging her. Ella is a sophomore in high school now, very talented and bright. I'm beyond proud of her and how well she's done. She was only 11 years old when we lost Mom, while I was 18. Ella's been very focused and motivated to do her absolute best at everything.

"Incoming…" She whispered in my ear. I pulled back from the hug, cocking an eyebrow before she pointed behind me. I turned around and grinned from ear to ear at the sight of my best friend. My heart skipped a beat as Barry locked eyes with me.

Barry smiled at me and started walking over with Joe and Iris a little ways behind him. I jogged to him and jumped up and hugged him. We laughed as he spun me around, overcome with glee at completing another milestone. I'd completed a Bachelor's degree in Photography with a minor in Forensic Science and Barry received his Bachelor's in Forensic Science.

After the day we both went to check out the particle accelerator, we found out that we have a lot of the same interests and the same major. We hung out as much as we could, whether it was studying for an exam, treating the other to something that wasn't ramen noodles, or even braving a few college parties together. We went as far as signing up for some of the same classes. Barry and I have spilled a lot of our baggage to each other. I've comforted him on the anniversary of his mother's death and he's comforted me on the anniversary of my mother's passing. We've seen each other cry at least twice, whether it was over midterms or a result of sleep deprivation or both. Barry Allen is definitely a friend that I'm keeping for life.

I shook the thought out of my mind as my Dad and Joe went and shook hands and started talking. Iris trudged over to us, looking happy, but jealous. "I wish I was graduating with you guys. I just wanna get out there already!"

I smiled encouragingly at her, "Oh come on, Iris. You have a couple more years! Soon, you'll be out and at it in no time. You know that time flies by quickly." She nodded at me, then held her arms out for a hug. I walked into her embrace. I was genuinely happy that she was here.

I used to be jealous of the friendship that Barry and Iris have. I was afraid that I would have to compete with her for his attention or that she would just keep him from hanging out with me, but that changed after I met her. Barry introduced us a year or so ago, and I soon learned that she's the absolute sweetest girl in the world, so my worries instantly ceased. All three of us are friends now and I couldn't be happier.

We pulled back from the hug and invited Barry into the circle. He joined us, making us a trio of smiling, gleeful faces. Joe interrupted us and we turned to pay attention to him.

"Alright, let's take a couple of pictures, then we'll go to the house to celebrate. Cake included." Our two families cheered at the mere mention of food. Today was a day of smiles.

Once the picture session was over, we started to walk to our cars to drive to the West residence. But I was stopped by someone calling out my name. I turned and found the speaker to be Ana. I grinned at her, as I hadn't seen her in a day or two.

"Hey Ana, isn't this exciting? We're starting our lives soon." She bounced in front of me nodding.

"I almost forgot to give you this. I'm actually leaving the city today, I got a job over in Starling City at Queen Consolidated." My eyes widened in surprise at the company name.

"Queen Consolidated? Wow, that's amazing!" I hugged her enthusiastically. When I pulled back, she held out a small envelope to me. Confused, I reluctantly took it and opened to see the contents inside. I pulled out a lone photo of me and Barry. I was tilted back, Barry's arms wrapped around me, we were staring into each other's eyes like there was no one else in the world. Scanning it for a moment, I was quick to recognize where the photo came from. "This is from when Barry and I first met, isn't it?" Ana smiled and nodded.

"I thought we trashed all of the photos that we didn't use for our project."

"Well, I decided to keep a few. No need to waste that much film. Anyways, I just wanted to give that to you. Don't be a stranger, okay?" We hugged once more and she walked over to her family.

"Hey. What's that?" I jumped when Barry snuck up behind me and stole the photo from my hand. He smiled when I tried to reach up and grab it, his 6'2" frame towered over my 5'3", so I didn't even come close to grabbing it.

"Oh, come on, Allen! What are we, in the second grade?" I continued to huff and puff as I tried to get the photo from him. My red hair continued to bounce around my shoulders and I kept jumping. He smirked at me, then tilted the picture so that he could get a good look at it. I froze when he lowered his hand, smiling nostalgically at the photo of us. He looked up at me.

"Well, that was a hectic day for me. I'm glad Ana took this, I'm gonna have to get a copy of it." He smiled at me, while I playfully shoved his shoulder. I grabbed Barry's hand gently and pulled him along, saying "Come on, our families are waiting!"

* * *

 _ONE AND A HALF YEARS LATER_

"Where's Allen?" I rolled my eyes as Singh yelled out to the crew. I focused my lens on another mark left on the victim's body, then snapped the picture. Getting up from my crouch position, I walked over to the three officers just as Barry ran up.

"You're gonna have to carry on without him…"

Barry was practically wheezing as he tried to apologize, "Sorry I'm late, Captain Singh."

The agitated Captain faced him and started shooting off questions. "What was it this time, Allen? Forgot to set your alarm clock? Before you answer, let me remind you that your last excuse was car trouble. Wanna know why that one was memorable?"

Barry's shoulders slumped. "I do not own a car."

Joe swiftly cut in to try and salvage Barry's job, "He was running an errand for me." Joe turned and focused his stare on him "Barry, did you get me what I asked for?" Barry started patting his pockets and pulled out a half-eaten chocolate bar. I covered my mouth to try and conceal my laughter, but my snort was still audible, which made everyone glance at me sternly.

"Ah, yeah. I had a few bites of it." Barry continued to stumble through his explanation. My shoulders were trembling from silent laughter at this point.

"Great! Now that our full CSI team is here, let's get a move on with this please." The Captain motioned towards the crime scene and Barry and I both started walking over there.

"You know, I'm half surprised that you still even have this job. Singh looked like he was gonna blow a gasket." I commented to Barry as he was putting his gloves on.

"Wouldn't be the first time, would it?" Barry asked as he lowered himself on to the ground to get a different angle of the scene. I watched him stare at a few points that even I couldn't see, then get up and come to a conclusion faster than I could sing the chorus of "Jingle Bells".

"Getaway car is a Mustang Shelby GT500. Shelby's have a rear super-wide tire specific to that model. Twelve inches with an asymmetrical tread." I glanced up to see Joe looking impressed and proud at the same time, taking notes on a notepad to keep for records. Barry had such a natural talent and a sharp mind and that made him a natural fit into the world of science.

"And there's something else." Barry swiped a pen from Chyre's jacket pocket and scooped up a sample from the small pile of the unknown substance and sniffing it. He recoiled quickly and put the sample into a baggie. "Fecral excrement. Animal, I'd guess." I scrunched my face up in disgust.

"My dad gave me that pen… before he died." My eyes widened as Barry gave Joe's partner an apologetic glance.

"Sorry." I grabbed Barry's arm, telling Joe that we were going back to the station to look at the samples and rushed him off with me.

"Oh my God, you just can not win today." I shook my head, snickering as we continued walking down the sidewalk. "So, how was your trip to Starling?"

* * *

A couple of hours later, I exited my office and walked next-door to Barry's lab space. Papers were strewn on top of boxes full of cases files, various chemicals in glass beakers and Erlenmeyer's flasks on various shelves (to be quite honest, I think it's a bit dangerous for all those chemical to be out in the open), several computer screens open and glowing with life.

"Hey Bear, I just sent you a couple of photos that I thought would be a bit more resourceful to your search. Feel free to check 'em out." I slumped in one of his chairs, exhausted from all the work I had done throughout the day.

"Alright, thanks." He took off his gloves and went to look at the database on his computer. I saw Iris walk in and waved to her.

She waved back while proclaiming her arrival. "Hey! I am ready to see this atom smasher—Smashing." Looking at the both of us, she smiled.

"There was a shooting today. Your dad needs us to process some evidence. Which means I don't know if we're gonna be able to make it to STAR Labs today." As sad as it was, Barry was right. We were both shuffling around our spaces trying to get more evidence for this case, and it was really time consuming.

"Seeing this thing turn on is like, your dream. Your sad little, nerdy dream." I gasped, faking offense. Iris turned to me, smiling innocently. "Besides, I canceled a date for this." She munched on a fry from Barry's lunch stack.

"Hands off my fries." Barry snatched them up playfully. He walked around her. "Unbelievable."

"I'm stress eating over my dissertation. We started selling cronuts at Jitters today. I ate two today. If I don't graduate soon, I'm gonna be more muffin top than woman."

I saw Barry scan Iris' body. "You look amazing." Iris' eyes flitted over to me for a second, back to Barry, then she scoffed as she looked at Barry's paperwork.

"What's so important about this particle accelerator, anyway?"

I breathed out, "Oh no, now you've done it." I walked up next to Iris and bumped hips with her. Barry put on his ranting face on and started explaining.

"Harrison Wells' work in Quantum Theory is light-years ahead of anything at CERN."

Iris interrupted him, "You're doing that thing again where you're not speaking English." Barry looked at her, then at me. I nodded in agreement with her, even though I understood every word that he had just said. He walked around us to his writing board.

"Okay. Just imagine…" He drew a dot on the clear board. "…that this dot is everything that the human race has ever learned up until this moment."

"Does that include twerking?" I chuckled as Iris crossed her arms. I sat down at Barry's desk and watched him explain.

Barry drew a circle around the large dots. "That is everything we could learn from the particle accelerator." He looked at us with an ecstatic grin.

Resting my head on my hands, I chipped in my two cents. "It's essentially a whole new way of looking at physics." Barry looked at me and nodded his head excitedly. Iris looked between the two of us before putting a hand on each of our shoulders.

"You two have got to get into relationships. Heck, you two would make the best nerd couple Central City has ever seen." She smirked as I snickered into my hands.

I nodded jokingly, "Oh yeah, absolutely. And we'd get married and have little clumsy ginger babies that would come out of the womb spouting on and on about Harrison Wells and heavy ion fusion." Iris and I laughed at my attempt at painting a picture of _me and Barry_ having children.

"Okay, hold up, I'm not _that_ much of a nerd..."

"Hey, leave him alone, he's working."

Iris smiled warmly at her father "Hi Dad." We all heard a beeping sound. "Oh, your test thingy is done." Barry walked over to his computer and waved me over before we surveyed it closely. By the time we turned back around, Joe was sat down in a chair with Iris right behind him.

"From what we've gathered, and this was 99% Barry's doing, we think the Mardon brothers are staying at a farm." I started off. Joe nodded at us, signaling to explain further. Barry continued.

"The fecal matter I found on the street, it was cow manure, which contains traces of oxytetracycline. It's an antibiotic." We switched off in our explanation.

"There are only four farms in the area that still use it in their feed."

Barry held out a list of the four locations to a proud-looking Joe. "Bet you'll find a really sweet Shelby parked at one of them."

Iris took this opportunity to swoop in, "Dad, seeing as Barry and Kate solved your poop problem, how about letting them go to STAR Labs?"

"Fine, go." I jumped with joy as the three of us gathered our stuff and walked out of the lab.

"Thanks, Joe!"

We sped to STAR Labs, where a crowd was slowly building outside. Iris turned to Barry as we pushed through the crowd to make conversation.

"So Barry, how was your trip? Did you find proof of the impossible in Starling City, or did you just make my dad mad for no reason?" Barry sighed before answering.

"You know, while I was away, I had a chance to think about you know, relationships." I perked up in confusion. Barry hadn't told me anything about this earlier. "And well, I'm not in one, neither are you two."

"Thanks for the reminder, Barry." I droned as Iris shoved me slightly.

"And you guys are my best friends…" A thought suddenly came to my mind and I gasped so loud several people looked at me to make sure that I wasn't dying or injured.

"What? What's wrong?" Iris put her face into my vision as I suddenly calmed down again, not wanting to freak anybody out. Barry looked concerned too. I waved them both off, telling them my sudden epiphany.

"It's nothing life threatening, I just remembered that I have a shoot to do. Sort of a side gig that I signed up for, I forgot about it. I'm gonna be late." I was really sad that I couldn't be here for the unveiling of the project Barry and I had discussed so many times over the course of our friendship. "I'll see you guys later." I walked through of the crowd and in the direction of my apartment, hoping that I wouldn't get penalized for being not exactly on time.

* * *

Almost an hour later, I had some personal equipment of mine set up outdoors by the track at the local high school. I was supposed to shoot the varsity cheer squad doing some of their routine.

"Don't know why your school's multimedia team isn't doing this. Could've gotten a grade for it. Added it to the yearbook." I continued to mumble frustratedly as I finished adjusting my set up. _Guess I'm still bitter about having to miss the particle accelerator going online._ I straightened up and called everyone to pay attention to me.

"Alright! Now, just don't mind me or the weather, just do your routine as normal. I'll be going around taking shots of you guys during, okay? You can start whenever." I held the camera up to my face, ready to take the first shot.

Not even a second later, it started raining again.

I heard a bunch of high pitched squeals and complaints about their hair and make-up as I put my camera down. I rolled my eyes as the coach directed the whining girls inside to the gym while I just stayed outside, ready to gather my equipment again. Thank goodness I put a waterproof cover over everything just in case. I had thought for sure that I had caught us in a dry time patch, but I guess the particle accelerator was messing with the weather. Something did catch my eye, though.

There were two students, not even phased by the torrential downpour, who were getting their marks ready on the track a couple of meters away from me. Intrigued by the power this scene had to offer me, I held the camera up to my face.

Then something strange happened.

The second I pressed the button and heard the clicking sound of my camera, a rush of energy hit me, causing patterns of light to run across the lens. My body felt a jolt from the energy that had swept over me and I collapsed. I saw the two kids running towards me just as my world went dark.

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 **So, that's the first chapter! What do you guys think? Great? Awesome? Terrible? Let me know by reviewing this story. It helps me write and post chapters quickly.**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Olá! I updated last chapter to make it better because I posted it WAY too quickly without checking for errors (that's what happens when you get excited about something and you speed write). If you're a fan of Teen Wolf, you can go check out my story Parachutes! I quite like it. I think it's not too terrible.**

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 **Disclaimer: Hey, I don't own The Flash. Give me a break. *cries in a corner***

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Ch 2

 _3 Months after the accident_

The groggy sounds of an EKG and busy hallways became clearer as I gasped and opened my eyes.

But I couldn't see.

"I can't see. I can't see! Why can't I see?" I reached up and felt a strip of cloth taped over my eye area. I felt a gentle hand on my arm, but it was unexpected, so I flinched and recoiled from the hand.

"Ma'am? Miss Steele? You're alright, just breathe. I'm Mrs. Geller, a nurse here at Central City Medical. Let me go get your doctor really quickly, just stay here, okay?"

 _Well, where the hell am I supposed to go, lady?_ I snarked in my head. I huffed as I heard footsteps going away from me. Taking a second to adjust to my surroundings, I slowly ran my fingertips along my immediate surroundings. I felt a blanket, sheets, and a railing, all I assumed were parts of my hospital bed. I reached up and out, but all that was felt was air.

Multiple pairs of footsteps rushed into my room and I heard a deep voice ask, "Well, Miss Steele, welcome back to the land of the living. How are you feeling? Nauseous? Dizzy?" I wanted to pound my fist into the thin mattress I was on as they skirted around probably the most obvious question.

"What is going on? What happened to me? Why can't I see?" I told them in a firm voice, because I needed answers _now_. I heard a sigh and then the deep voice started to explain.

"The day that STAR Labs' particle accelerator went online, there was a problem that caused several casualties all over the city and hundreds to be injured. You were one of those people. But, you fell into a coma instead of gaining consciousness again after a week or two like most of the accident patients have."

I'm sure if my eyes could widen, they would. "A coma? How long have I been out?"

"Only for three months." _THREE MONTHS?_

I took a deep breath and braced myself to address the elephant in the room. "Okay, why is there a cloth over my eyes?"

"Oh, don't worry, you're not blind." I sighed in relief, purely because that means I still had a job. "It's just to help your eyes heal. When you were first admitted, you did have the vision of a legally blind person (for someone who was comatose, anyways), but over time, your eyes seemed to…well… fix themselves. We've calculated your healing rate and your sight should be fully restored in about two to three weeks." There was a pounding sound as I heard my father's voice grow louder.

"I heard she's awake, is she? I was just down in the cafeteria when I heard it on someone's pager." I guess that's when he saw me, because I felt familiar arms wrap around my shoulder. I immediately melted into my father's embrace, happy to see him. But then I pulled back suddenly, worried.

"Dad, did you spend all three months here? What about your job in Virginia? What about Ella?" Our family lived in Virginia, and I had moved to Central City permanently after college. It was a change of scenery, but I grew to love my new home.

I felt a kiss to my temple. "Oh, no, sweetheart. I requested a week's vacation time to come and visit you. I did spend the first month or so commuting back and forth." My mouth dropped open.

"Commuting? Dad, that's a lot of flights to take. You could have used those air miles for something else."

"No. I didn't want to become distant with you like I was with your mom, so I've been spending as much time with you as I could. Ella's been up a couple of times, when she's on break from school." I hugged my father tightly. While I was conversing with my father, I had completely forgotten that there was two other people in the room.

"There's another call for Allen. He's flatlined again, I've gotta go." My heart stopped at the name that came from the doctor's mouth.

"Wait, Allen? _Barry_ Allen? What's wrong with him?" I started to get more scared as there was silence following my question. "Dad?" I squeaked out, hoping that the news wasn't too terrible.

Hearing another sigh, I prepared myself. My Dad started explaining. "That night, when everything went bizarre here, Barry was struck by lightning in his lab." I gasped, but he continued. "I talked to Joe and he said that there's something wrong with Barry's heart, it keeps stopping and having to be revived. He's in a coma as well."

I felt a tear trail down my cheek. My heart overflowed with sympathy and worry for Barry and the West's. I was obviously torn apart at the news, but Iris and Joe had to be taking the news the worst. I looked in what I guess was my father's general direction. "But he's gonna be okay, right? He'll get better eventually?"

More silence.

"They don't know, Katie." And that's when my mood turned sour.

Because my father only calls me Katie when the situation looks grim.

* * *

 _5 months after the accident_

I was sat in my apartment, watching reruns of the most recent winter olympics. The skater currently performing was beautiful and graceful, her jumps and turns were sharp and precise, her dance moves melting into the routine.

I didn't take my sight for granted anymore, now that it was fully restored. I cherished photography even more than I did before, movies are my favorite pastime now, along with nature watching. Although the doctors said that my vision was practically perfect now, I did get this tingling sensation behind my eyes every once in a while. But I ignored reporting it as it wasn't annoying or painful.

The skater finished her routine, waving to the judges and gliding off of the rink effortlessly. My cell phone rang and I got off of my couch to answer it. Leaning against my fridge, I answered my phone.

"Hello?" I pulled out a stick of celery and started munching on it.

"Hey Kate," Iris' voice chirped through the speaker. "Some of the staff at Jitters are going ice skating, you wanna come?"

I swallowed, "I don't know…I don't really know your coworkers that well, plus I haven't been skating in so long. I'm probably terrible!"

Iris giggled lightly. "Well, that's the point of this, going out and meeting new people. Besides, no one expects you to be a pro skater." She was met with my silence as I pondered the pros and cons.

"Please Kate, please? For me?" I rolled my eyes as I imagined Iris' face set in a very persuasive pout. I huffed again, chomping down on the last few inches of celery.

"Fine, okay. I'll go." I had to hold the phone a few inches away from my ear to save my eardrums from Iris' squeals of joy.

"Okay, meet us at the rink in 30 minutes." She hung up and I started scrambling around my bedroom for proper skating clothes. Eventually deciding on a pair of thick jeggings and a purple long sleeved shirt and black vest, I deemed myself ready for public embarrassment. Slipping on my black boots and grabbing my phone, wallet, and house key, I ran down the staircase leading out of my apartment complex and started walking to the indoor rink.

Stepping through the doors of the rink, a blast of cold air made me shiver. I scanned the outer part of the rink, looking for Iris. I soon spotted her waving hands and speed walked over to her, happy to have a familiar face in a crowd of strangers.

"Okay, so this is Tammy, Denton, Lana, Delia, Shelby, and Rob." She pointed to each person while introducing them and they waved. "Guys, this is Kate." Iris then pointed to me and everyone waved again. I decided to break the ice between us and joke around.

"You guys might wanna have EMTs on hand because I haven't skated in forever, so be prepared to see me go splat on the ice." Some of the group chuckled and Iris pointed back to the skate rental booth.

"Let's go get our skates!" After checking out skates for each of us and strapping them on, we all wobbled up to the entrance. I held shakily on to the edge of the rink as I stepped out onto the smooth ice. After stepping a few times, I got more comfortable skating away from the edge. Soon, I was skating smoothly around the rink, stopping and starting like it was embedded in my blood.

I skated towards the middle of the rink and wanted to turn towards the group that I came to skate with when suddenly my body propelled into the air, twirling, and landing perfectly on one skate with my back leg out. Suddenly after the first landing, I jumped and twirled again. I uprighted myself and skidded to a stop, wondering what just happened.

I heard a bout of whoops and cheers as Iris and her coworkers skated up to me. "Oh my gosh, that was amazing! How did you do that?" I scanned my body with wide eyes as I looked at Iris.

"I have no idea." One of the girls came up with her phone in hand, and shoved the screen in my face.

"You just pulled off a perfect triple lutz and a double toe, back to back! I thought you said you hadn't skated much before?" The whole group looked at me with wide, expecting eyes. I didn't even understand the terminology that was just spouted to me.

"I haven't, really."

Lana scoffed, "Well, this video certainly says otherwise." She shoved her phone into my face and the screen showed me several minutes before my jumps and it turns out that I had been pulling off lots of footwork and weaving my skates in and out and around each other as I glided around the ice.

The routine looked very familiar.

"Hey, can you send that to me?" Lana nodded as I typed my number in on her phone and she instantly went to clicking away. My heart was racing as my confusion rose at the what just happened.

I turned to Iris. "I think I'm gonna go. I have work early tomorrow and I'm gonna visit Barry after, so I don't wanna be tired for that."

Iris pouted and slouched, "Aw, but you just got here! Are you sure?" I nodded, and she gave me a hug. I said my goodbyes to the rest of the group and skated off of the rink area. I practically threw my skates at the employee in my rush to get out of there.

I pushed the door open and looked side to side quickly before walking briskly to my apartment complex. Shutting and locking the door once I reached my apartment, I turned to see that my tv was still on. Grabbing the remote, I pressed the rewind button all the way until I saw the skater from earlier. My phone vibrated, and I pulled it out of my pocket to see that I had a message from Lana. It was the video from tonight.

I opened it and watched myself skate. I pressed play on the remote and the skater started skating her routine again. Putting the phone into view right next to the tv, my eyes widened at what I saw. They were the exact same moves.

I whispered in shock, "What the hell?"

* * *

 _7 months after the accident_

I walked into Captain Singh's office, plopping the file from our most recent case on his desk. He flipped through the folder and looked up at me incredulously, like it was my fault that I didn't have all of the answers right away. Because my degree included a minor in Forensic Science, I automatically had to take over Barry's position in his absence. While maintaining my job at the same time.

I shrugged my shoulders. "That's all I got, sorry." Singh sighed and wiped his hands down his face frustratedly.

"I never thought I'd say this, but, we need Allen. Badly." I rolled my eyes.

"Yeah, I think I noticed that." I sassed. "He's kind of too busy _fighting for his life_ at the moment, so I'm _sorry_ if I can't give you all of the answers right away like Barry can!" Singh looked at me wide-eyed and I froze, realizing that I'd just blown up on my Captain.

I deflated instantly, plopping down in one of the chairs in front of his desk "I'm sorry. It's just everyone's dumping twice the workload on me now and I'm still worried about Barry and I'm stressed out to the point that I can't handle this anymore." Not only that, but I've been freaked out ever since the ice skating incidence. I originally brushed it off, but after I chopped up a pile of vegetables like a master sushi chef I saw on tv, I've been closed off more than usual.

It felt like I had no control over my body anymore, and I liked a little bit of control in my life.

"Take the rest of the day off." I looked up from where my hands were covering my face, my red hair a curtain around me. Singh looked completely serious.

"What? But it's only 11:00am…"

"You heard me, take the day. I know the signs of stress and sleep deprivation when I see it. Go home, rest, come back tomorrow ready to work." I slowly stood up, nodding graciously at my superior.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you." I started towards the door. Singh looked at me sternly and I scrambled out of the office so that I wouldn't get in his way.

After locking up my office, I walked out on to the sidewalks of Central City. I figured that I had enough time to waste, so I went in the direction of STAR Labs. The mechanical doors glided open and I darted inside. Turning a couple of corners and a long hallway, I ended in the room where they were treating Barry. He was sleeping soundly, as he had been ever since they transferred him here a month ago. Dr. Caitlin Snow was by him with a touchpad, looking at a few levers and tapping something on the pad.

"Any changes?" I decided to speak up. Caitlin jumped and turned around, seemingly startled by my quiet entrance. I approached his bedside and sat in the lone chair for visitors, holding Barry's hand for moral support.

"Not so far, his vitals are more stable, but still at the same levels they were a couple of months ago." The doctor explained distractedly as she typed some more on the pad.

"So, his vital levels are enough to be alive, but not enough to come out of a coma?" I elaborated sadly.

Caitlin nodded. "Exactly."

"Hey, it's my favorite lightning-strike-victim-coma-patient visitor!" I heard a cheerful voice from behind me.

I turned around and smiled. "That's kind of a mouthful, Cisco." He smiled back at me and clapped a hand on my shoulder. "This is a short visit anyways, I need to go home and sleep." He nodded and pulled Caitlin out of the room, who was reaching longingly for the equipment as Cisco dragged her out of hearing range.

I pulled my chair closer to Barry's bed. As I laid my head on my crossed arms, I thought of what exactly I was going to say.

"Hey, Barry. It's me, Kate. But you can probably tell from the sound of my voice. You should really wake up soon because everyone at the station is going ballistic. I hate how it takes you getting struck by lightning for everyone to realize your importance and contribution to the force. I'd love to say 'I told you so' and dance on their desks but then I wouldn't have a job…" I laughed quietly. Of course, Barry's face stayed impassive, only moving by association of the motion of his chest contracting and expanding with every breath.

"I also need my best friend back, because there's something strange going on with me. It's hard to explain, but I can like… copy people? Their movements? I haven't looked much into it, but you'd probably know the term for it. You would help me figure all of this out because I'm _freaking out_ Barry. I know that I'm supposed to be the calm, collected one who always has a solution for everything, but this time I don't know what to do. So if you would wake up soon, help me figure this out, that'd be great. Movie nights are kinda lonely without you." I smiled a watery smile as all of the stress and anxiety that had built up over the past couple of months started poking holes in my armor.

I kissed Barry's forehead and walked out of the lab. The entire way home I plugged up the emotional breakdown that was bound to happen. Speeding up the staircase and shakily unlocking my door, I entered my apartment. The second the door closed, the dam burst.

I collapsed to the floor and started sobbing. Tears ran rampant down my face as my shoulders shook from being overwhelmed these past few months.

The last time I had cried this hard was when my mother died. Of course I didn't cry in front of my father or sister. I cried later that night when we got the call, my sobs muffled by a thick comforter and a dry wall. Taking my mom's place as the oldest female in our family, I felt a certain responsibility all the time. To be the strong one, the one who always has a solution for every situation, the maternal role model for Ella. Pretty soon, acting just turned into a mindset change, and I became the person I am today.

I don't know how long I cried for exactly, but by the time I sat up, my thighs and butt were sore from sitting on the wooden floors for so long. I collected myself and got up slowly, walking into my bathroom. Turning on the lights and looking in the mirror, a flushed face with swollen eyes stared back at me. My hair was scrunched in a few places and my cheeks sunken in a little.

Over the past few months, the worry with whatever's happening to me and the extra workload at the station has been eating away at me. Crime had gone up since the accident with the particle accelerator and I'd been neglecting breakfast and lunch breaks to get those reports out and filed. Also pushing my brain to think far beyond it's normal speed. Most nights I was lucky if I got two or three hours of sleep. I splashed my face with water, and surveyed myself once more.

"No more." I whispered harshly to myself in the mirror. I couldn't be solely dependent on Barry or waiting on him to get back. _He may never wake up._ I flinched at the thought. Regardless, I wouldn't stand for not having control of my life anymore "Woman up, ignore whatever's happening to you, and do your job." I told myself.

My ears perked at the sound of a knock at my door. I wasn't expecting any visitors, so I was on the defense. I ran a hand through my hair in an attempt to make it look half decent. I looked through my peephole, rose an eyebrow, then opened the door slowly.

"Dr. Wells?"

The famous (or should I say _in_ famous) man was parked in his wheelchair in front of my doorway, pensive smile on his face.

"Hello, Miss Steele. I do believe that we have something to discuss."

* * *

 _8 months after the accident_

I reluctantly took a step into what was deemed the "observation room" at STAR Labs. Dressed in athletic clothes and barefoot, I set myself to work.

Turns out, whenever I was talking to Barry the day of my mental breakdown, Wells was eavesdropping the entire time. Immediately, I was angry at the intrusion of our private moment (even though it was pretty much one-sided). Then he offered to help me "understand my abilities" and to "hone them". I was just surprised that he didn't show up and order me into a strait jacket. He told me to take as long as I needed to take him up on his offer.

Which I did. I figured that I had to get my life back on track before I even thought about training this… "ability" I had. Within about three weeks of my breakdown and conversation with Wells, my life was about as normal as it could be. I took out time for food breaks during my long days solving cases at the station. That, combined with me actually following a proper sleep schedule, lifted my energy and mood by a wide margin, so I moved through cases more efficiently.

Now, it wasn't all peaches and cream. I still got the occasional roadblock, some cases I couldn't explain logically how exactly the criminals did some of their deeds, but I handled them with dignity and collectiveness. I was pretty proud of myself.

Yesterday, I walked into STAR Labs and announced that I would be taking Wells up on his offer. Today, we run general tests.

A crackling of a speaker made me look towards the window, I saw Cisco and Dr. Wells looking at me while Caitlin was speaking into a microphone.

"Okay, Kate, we're tracking your vitals through all of this. Whenever you're ready, you can start." I had watched a video of a girl doing a gymnastics routine on a pair of double bars, and they had monitored me the entire time. Before, they had me do a normal physical diagnostic exam. While watching the video, my eyes would dart towards a certain aspect of the video and Caitlin and Cisco would scribble something down onto a notepad. It was weird being a lab rat.

"Where did you guys even get these? Did you just have them lying around?" I pointed to the double bars.

"We borrowed it from the local gym, don't worry about it." Cisco remarked.

"Why bars? Why not something more… sensible for a first timer? Like a balance beam or just a mat?"

Cisco smirked. "This is more fun." I nodded in sarcastic agreement and looked up at the large piece of equipment.

I breathed in and out, then I started.

My hands snapped upwards as I jumped so I caught myself and swung around on the lower beam. My muscles didn't fail me, as I held myself up easily. Taking a second to assess myself, I looked briefly towards my audience and flashed a nervous smile. Cisco gave me a thumbs up, so I continued. I stood on the lower bar and leaned forward so that I could grab on to the high bar and swing around some more. My body twisted and turned as I maneuvered my way around the double bars, not faltering once. Soon, the time came for my landing and I swung my lower body forward, throwing myself off the high bar, tightening my torso as I spun in mid-air and landed solidly.

My arms were in a straightened position next to my head, and the adrenaline started to wear off from the routine. Arms dropping, I turned to find Cisco and Caitlin's mouths wide open in shock, while Dr. Wells had a wise, almost knowing look on his face.

I stepped out of the observation room and looked at the three scientists.

"So?"

Dr. Wells nodded, "Just as I had suspected. Eidetic Kinesthesia." I shook my head, not understanding. "Or adoptive muscle memory, as most would like to call it. It's the ability to replicate movement after observation." I took off the hand guards required for the use of the double bars, throwing them to the side.

I rubbed at the sweat on the back of my neck, "So if there's a name for it, certainly there must be some other people with the same ability."

But Dr. Wells shook his head. "I'm afraid not. Eidetic kinesthesia has always been a talk of science fiction and fantasy. There have been speculations of the ability being correlated with giftedness, but certain studies have proved otherwise. As of right now, the only human being on Earth with 100% recorded proof of attaining this ability is you, Miss Steele."

"No pressure." I chuckled nervously.

"That is… AWESOME." Cisco seemed to explode with happiness. "This is revolutionary, you do realize that you could learn to fight like Bruce Lee?" I rolled my eyes playfully at Cisco's suggestion. "Oh come on, just watch _Enter the Dragon_ or _Fists of Fury_ and it's like he'll be right here with me." He got this dreamy look in his eyes. "You can be my personal bodyguard!" Caitlin rolled her eyes and whispered something to Dr. Wells before leaving the room.

I patted his shoulder as I passed him on my way to look at the video footage. "Your inner fanboy is revealing itself, Cisco."

I heard him scoff, "Who said I wanted to keep it hidden?" I tilted my head back and forth in acknowledgment.

"Fair point." I muttered as I pressed play on the video. Cisco had edited the screen so the two videos played side by side. Just like the skating video, I was a perfect replica of the original product. "This is just weird." I plopped into a chair, leaning my elbow against the desk.

"Maybe what the world needs is a little weird." Dr. Wells rolled up next to me. I peaked at the brilliant scientist before turning to him.

"What am I supposed to do with this? Become a superhero? Fight crime? Become a professional stunt man or musician? I'm a _photographer_ , that's about as non-athletic as a person can get." I flopped against the desk in frustration.

Dr. Wells seemed to consider his words first before speaking, "No one's asking you to do anything that you do not want to do, _we're_ not asking you to do anything that you don't want to do. What you do with this ability is ultimately up to you." His words calmed me and my shoulders relaxed.

"I'm no Arrow or Superman, but I still think that I could do some good around here." My big toe dragged from side to side on the cold floor as I stared at my feet. "With some time and practice and training."

Dr. Wells nodded, "When the time comes."

That time would come sooner than I thought.

* * *

 **I heart reviews. I really do.**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Hey everyone! This took me a moment to write, but I like the end result well enough. Also, I wrote more than half of this chapter by watching the pilot** ** _without subtitles._** **So any word that doesn't seem right in the dialogue is because I was purely guessing as to what was being said by the character.**

 **Destroyer of All: Thank you for your kind words! Honestly, I think that reason that it's so easy for me to write Cisco well is because he and I have the same sense of humor. So it's essentially me writing what I would say or do in a situation and just putting his name on it haha.**

* * *

 **Disclaimer: I wish I owned The Flash. But alas, I do not.**

* * *

Ch 3

 _9 months after the accident_

I stepped into my apartment, music blasting in my earphones. Rushing to get out of my sticky clothes, I hopped into the shower. The warm water soothed my muscles and I felt immensely better after a few minutes.

Caitlin recommended a strict training regiment for me after I waddled back into STAR Labs the day after my trick with the double bars, sore as I could get. Most of my outside training just include a daily morning run, but I did have to do specific exercises to target my core, shoulders, and back. Though my ability is still unpredictable, we're getting a handle on it. I know now that the tingling behind my eyes is an indication that my ability is working.

Once the shower turned to a chilly temperature, I knew that I had been in the shower for too long. I had to get ready for work.

Drying myself off and throwing on some decent clothes for work, I ran out of my apartment and trekked it to the station. When I was about halfway there, my phone started ringing. The caller ID showed it was Ella, so of course I answered.

"Hey!"

 _"_ _Hey Kate, how is everything?"_

"I'm great. Just on my way to work. You caught me at a good time actually. How's school?"

 _"_ _It's fine. Everything's great. I got the part I wanted in the school's musical this year."_

"Oh my gosh, that's amazing! I'm so proud of you. I really wish that I could come see you." I gasped as I suddenly got an idea. "Maybe I can take a day or two off to come see you perform!"

 _"_ _I'd love that! At least someone would be there to support me."_

And that's when I stopped in my tracks, in the middle of the sidewalk. "Wait, what are you talking about? Won't Dad be there?"

 _"_ _I don't know, he's been kind of distant lately."_ I continued walking as I realized that I was right in front of the station and I was almost late.

"Distant? Distant how?" I whispered as I walked upstairs. I didn't want to disturb anyone while they were working. Unlocking my office and then Barry's lab, I immediately set to multitasking.

 _"_ _I don't know, he's just not around as much anymore. He goes out late at night sometimes, doesn't come back until the early morning. I just…"_ Ella continued to stutter over her words.

"Oh, spit it out Ella, come on." I ordered as I placed five test tubes into a centrifuge, closing the lid and turning it on.

 _"_ _I think… I think Dad's seeing someone."_ My body went rigid.

"Seeing someone? As in dating? Are you sure?" I replied unsurely.

 _"_ _He used to tell me about all of his stuff at work all the time. He never tells me about what he does anymore. I don't know, it's all very confusing. What should I do?"_ Okay, time to step into the big sister shoes.

"Just ask him. Do it at dinner or something. Just a simple, 'Hey Dad, are you seeing anyone?' in between bites of chicken parmesan. Don't make it a big deal and he'll be more likely to answer truthfully." I sat in Barry's old spinning chair and spun around a couple of times.

 _"_ _But it_ is _kind of a big deal. This would be his first time dating since… since Mom."_ I felt a pang in my chest as I recognized that my little sister was right.

"I know it is, and we both know that he'll always love Mom. But he has the right to be happy too after all that's happened lately. It's about time. He can't wait forever." I heard Ella sigh and shuffle around a little bit.

 _"_ _I guess you're right. Thanks Kate."_ I smiled as the warm feeling of satisfaction started to spread throughout my chest. I heard someone open the lab doors and I put a finger up to signal just one second.

A voice said, "Hey, I'm back."

I turned and said, "One second, Barry." and went back to my conversation. Once I was about to say something else to Ella, my entire body went rigid. Turning back around, I saw a familiar pair of green eyes that I hadn't seen in months smiling at me.

 _"_ _Wait, did you say Barry? He's awake?"_ My sister's question confirmed that I just saw who I thought I saw.

"I…I'll call you back Ella." I hung up the phone and dropped it on the desk, running towards my best friend and hugging him tightly. He caught me swiftly and I stayed in his embrace for the longest time. My heart overflowed with elation as I realized that was real, that I wasn't dreaming this.

I felt Barry's chest rumble as he chuckled at me, "It's good to see you too, Kate."

Suddenly I pulled back from the hug and pushed at his chest. Barry's happy face turned into shock as I kept poking him. "Don't. You. Ever. Do. That. To. Me. Again. Barry Allen." He was holding my wrists by this point and I was thrashing around, practically hysterical. "You scared the hell out me. Damn you…" He pulled me back into a hug as my voice started cracking. A couple of tears escaped my eyes as Barry rubbed my back soothingly.

"I'm still here, my heart's still beating. I'm not going anywhere, I promise." His deep voice calmed me down as I pulled back and nodded. Barry's hand started twitching and he got this confused look on his face. "Hey, I gotta go do something. I'll call you later." Barry walked out of the lab as quickly as he came.

 _Not going anywhere, huh?_ I exited the lab, running centrifuge forgotten as I followed Barry out of the door and into the back alley. My eyes widened as I saw his hand vibrate at an inhuman speed. Then he was suddenly a twenty feet away from where we was originally standing. He looked back and forth a couple of times, then he zoomed past my hiding spot and into a laundry truck. Apologizing to the man, Barry stepped out and brushed himself off. I decided it was time to reveal myself.

"Lightning strikes really change you, don't they Barry?" He spun around, eyes the size of saucers, to see me standing with my arms crossed. Barry walked up to me and started whispering so quickly that I almost couldn't understand what he was saying.

"Idon'tknowhowthehellthathappenedIswearIhaven't doneanyofthatbeforeinmylifeverpleasedon'ttellanyoneKateplease." I held up a hand, stopping his rant. He looked at me with pleading eyes and I crumbled a little.

"Come on, I know some people who might be able to help you with this." I took his hand and we started walking to STAR Labs.

* * *

"You don't really believe that he can run that fast, do you?" Caitlin typed on her pad as she talked to Dr. Wells.

"I do, I saw it with my own eyes." I defended Barry, arms crossed.

"Well, I believe in anything is possible and maybe in a few minutes, you will too." Dr. Wells spoke, looking up at Caitlin.

"Plus, you saw that I have an ability, why is Barry's so far out of the spectrum?"

Caitlin sighed, "Well, yours seems like more of an evolutionary ability, something that humans could eventually learn to do in a millennium or so. While Barry's ability seems a bit… comic book-ish." She grimaced at the end of her sentence.

"Wait, _your_ ability? Kate, you can do stuff too?" I heard Barry come up behind me. I turned around, mouth open in shock as he wasn't supposed to know yet.

"Um. Yeah." I stuttered out.

"What can you do?"

I looked at my feet and shuffled them around nervously, "It's not really much compared to what you can do… Psht, don't you have a test to do? Go to Cisco, we can talk later." I shoved him in Cisco's direction and he shrugged before complying with my orders.

I heard the buzz of Dr. Wells' wheel chair spin up beside me. "This discovery, if proven to be true, brings about a whole new set of questions pertaining to you." My head snapped in his direction.

"Me? What does this have to do with me? What questions?" My eyes grew wide. I thought that we almost had all of my power figured out, that we had no more puzzle pieces to put together.

"Can you effectively copy superhuman abilities? Can you attain those abilities? If so, for how long?" I groaned as this meant a whole new set of tests that I had to go through.

Cisco jogged over to us and started putting together Barry's ear device on his helmet. Caitlin came back and started tapping away at her pad.

"I never meant for Barry to find out that quickly. It was supposed to be a gradual thing." I knocked my head against the table.

"Well, on the bright side, you and Barry could become a crime fighting team!" Cisco offered, he started bouncing up and down in excitement at the possibility. I rolled my eyes and focused on Barry and Dr. Wells talking.

Soon they separated and Barry stepped forward, taking his mark. He looked back at us, and I nodded encouragingly, signaling to him that he could go.

Then, a rush of wind blew back at us as Barry darted off in a spiral of light. Cisco ended up falling straight on his butt and Caitlin and I shielded ourselves from the flying papers, while Dr. Wells stayed stock still as Barry kept on running. Barry cheered while running and I giggled at his enthusiasm.

"He just passed 200 miles per hour." Cisco yelled out, looking at his machine.

Caitlin, who had a pair of binoculars in her hands, put them down in disbelief. "It's not possible." She breathed.

"I'd say that's pretty possible." I retorted. "Wow, look at him go!" Dr. Wells smiled at my words.

Then, out of nowhere, there was an explosion. Tons of water sprayed out into the air and above where I'd assume that Barry had crashed. I gasped and started calling out to him.

"Barry? Barry!" He zoomed up to me and fell against my body, cradling his arm.

"Ah, my arm." He moaned. Caitlin came up and took him by the arm and led him back into the trailer.

"We'll need to treat this at STAR Labs. It looks serious." She prodded his arm and looked at Dr. Wells. He nodded and we started to pack everything up, getting ready to transport back to the lab.

* * *

"It looks like you had a distal radius fracture."

"Wait, _had_?" Barry asked in a confused tone.

"It's healed. In three hours."

"How is that even possible?" Barry whispered.

"That's the thing… We don't know." I leaned against a desk, arms crossed.

"Yet." Caitlin added before going to punch in the calculations into the computer.

"You really need to learn how to stop." I snickered at Cisco's comment while Barry smiled. Dr. Wells rolled up to Barry's bedside.

"What happened out there today? You were moving pretty well, did something cause you to lose focus?" Barry's face darkened at the question.

"I started remembering something." He croaked out. Wait, I knew that look. He got it every time someone asked about his…

Dr. Wells nodded his head, silently asking Barry to elaborate, but I interrupted before he could start. "Barry, you don't have to tell them, not today." I said soothingly.

"It's fine." Barry dismissed me, then continued. "When I was eleven, my mother was murdered." Everything in the room suddenly stopped as Barry's story was told.

"It was late. A sound woke me up. I came downstairs and…" He choked up a little before continuing. "I saw what looked like a ball of lightning. Inside the lightning, there was a man. He killed my mom." Dr. Wells looked at Barry with pained eyes. "They arrested my dad, he's still sitting in Iron Heights for her murder. Everyone, the cops, the shrinks, they all told me what I saw was impossible." He paused. "But what if the man who killed my mom was like me?"

"Well I think I can say that, unequivocally, you are one of a kind." Barry nodded sadly at Dr. Wells words, then he looked over to me.

"How do you fit into all of this? How do you know these guys?"

I played with my hands a little, "Well, the day the particle accelerator went online, I had an accident too." Barry's eyes widened, I put my hands up to placate him. "I didn't get struck by lightning, but I was hit with this… pulse of energy. I ended up in a coma, just like you did, but only for three months instead of nine. A couple of months after I woke up, I started experiencing weird things. I could do things that I had never trained for in my life before." I trailed off as Barry looked just as confused as before. "Eidetic… Kinesthesia is what I think Dr. Wells called it?"

I looked over to the brilliant scientist and he nodded before I looked back to Barry, "I can copy people and pretty much exactly how they do a movement. All I have to do is look at them doing it."

"Yeah, you could say she's a… Copy Cat." Cisco joked before snickering at his own pun. I rolled my eyes and shot him a deadpan expression.

"Cisco, that wasn't funny the first time, and it's still not funny the seventh time you've said that." But Cisco wasn't swayed by my words because he looked to Barry for his reaction.

"Well, it's his first time hearing the joke, he might find it funny!" Cisco looked to Barry with wide, pleading eyes. Barry looked back and forth between us, before smiling the tiniest smile.

"It was a little funny." He pinched his fore finger and thumb close together to show how funny he thought it was, but that was enough for Cisco's standards. He cheered and started doing a victory dance, which made me laugh.

"Speaking of your ability, do you wanna test out Dr. Wells theory?" Caitlin came up to the group, pad in hand. I nodded before going to change.

Coming back into the lab, I tugged at my training capris and tank top, making sure they wouldn't be a problem if I had to do any stretching. Cisco hooked me up to a small, weightless, portable vitals tracking machine.

Walking into my training room, I saw everyone sitting outside, looking in through the window. Cisco started speaking in the microphone, "Do you feel any different? More than usual?"

"I got a tingly feeling behind my eyes watching Barry run, but it wasn't as strong as usual. Let me try and run." I crouched down before running at a normal speed for a few feet. Looking at the group, I shrugged in confusion. "It didn't work. I wonder why?"

The group talked some more behind the window as I stared at them. Then, Caitlin started talking into the mic again. "Hey, Kate? We're gonna run the beam test again, so if you wanna go over there and do your thing, that'd be fine. We'll be watching." I nodded and walked over to the balance beam that was standing in the middle of the room.

I did some stretches and rolled my shoulders before running and jumping on a spring board, propelling myself onto the beam. Doing the same routine that I did three weeks ago, I turned and flipped on the beam, landing more and more sturdy each time. My body twisted and danced and performed like the olympic hopeful I watched all those weeks ago. Coming to the final dismount, I ran and launched myself off the beam into the air, twisted my body twice, before landing firmly on the mat. I took a deep breath.

Tip-toeing off of the mat and over to a stack of towels, I grabbed one and walked out of the room to hear Cisco's giggling. I wiped my face and smiled at him. His hands went to his head, as if he didn't believe what he was seeing, even though this was practically routine for a month now. "That never gets old, I swear."

"But why have her only do gymnastics? Why not something more… defensive, like karate." I overheard Barry ask Dr. Wells. The older man seemed to think for a second before answering.

"We would have by now, but unfortunately Miss Steele does not have a proper sparring partner and we can't risk sending her out anywhere untrained."

"Sending her out? What?" Barry seemed confused and I decided to end the conversation before it got to a place that I didn't want it to go.

I tapped Barry on the "Come on, I think we deserve a coffee." He grinned at me and we took our leave.

* * *

Barry and I were walking down the sidewalk towards Jitters at a leisurely pace. His hands were in his pocket and mine were relaxed at my side. A group of construction workers were on the job at a new building, steam coming out of one of their machines. The scent of nature topped with a bit of gasoline was oddly charming. People sped around us in their business suits and jogging outfits, trying to reach their destinations.

"What you can do, it's really cool. Amazing, even." I scoffed at Barry's compliment.

" _Me_? Amazing? Oh come on, you can run over 200 miles per hour!" I whispered so no one would overhear. "Now _that_ is amazing. My power is rather… mundane." I kicked at a rock, the pebble only making it a few feet away from where we originally stood.

"I wouldn't call being able to copy an olympic-level gymnastics routine from a video mundane. Embrace your awesomeness! You have a gift now, so use it…" Barry trailed off with a stoney face as he looked at something in the distance.

"Use it for… what? What are we looking at?" I turned in the direction that Barry was facing and saw Iris and Detective Thawne kissing. "What the hell?" I whispered. Looking up at Barry, he had disappointment written all over his face. I grabbed his hand and we started to walk in the opposite direction.

Iris calling our names, stopping us in our tracks. We looked back to see her running to catch up to us. We stood in silence for a moment, no one wanting to start the conversation. So I decided to take the plunge.

"How long?"

"Almost five months. Not long."

"Long enough." I crossed my arms, anger taking over my features. "Okay, Barry has an excuse for not knowing because he just woke up, but me? I've been here for _months_ and you still didn't tell me." The anger in my expression morphed into hurt. Iris had the decency to look ashamed. "Were you ever gonna tell me?"

"I was, I swear. Soon. But it's just you were working so closely with my dad I was afraid you would accidentally let something slip and…" Iris was tongue-tied as she couldn't seem to finish the rest of her sentence. I looked at Barry, who had stayed quiet throughout our entire conversation. Somehow, he looked the most hurt out of all of us.

I started walking away from them, "I'm going to the station, you two can talk this out." I was about to fully face away from them, but a final plea from Iris stopped me.

"Kate! Just, please, don't tell my dad. Not yet." I turned around, still steaming from our debacle of a discussion.

"Never said I was going to." I stomped away from my two best friends.

* * *

I was at the station, looking through a set of photos that I'd taken when there was a knock on my office door. Going over and opening the door, I was greeted by Joe and his partner.

"Hey, Joe! Detective Thawne. What's up?" I stood by my open office door, waiting for one of them to start speaking. Joe ended up stepping forward while Eddie stayed back, giving the two of us some privacy.

"Barry ended up at a crime scene earlier with Iris. He was telling me about how he saw Clyde Mardon and how he can control the weather somehow. I don't know what's going on with him, but I know that me and Eddie are going to check out his old hiding place." My eyes widened as Joe's story started to sound more and more like something STAR Labs should handle. But I didn't interrupt him and I let him finish what he came here to tell me.

"Just know, that if I don't make it back… tell Barry and Iris that I love them. And tell Barry that I didn't mean any of the stuff that I said to him earlier." I put a hand on his shoulder then hugged him. He returned the hug quickly.

Pulling back, I looked my second father figure in the eye. "You're going to make it back. I know you both will." I peeked back at Eddie. Joe nodded at me, then smiled before turning to Eddie and signaling that they would go.

As soon as they left, I gathered up all of my belongings for the day and I booked it out of the building all the way to STAR Labs.

The doors whistled as they opened for me and I plopped my things on the ground, "Hey, I heard this thing about Clyde Mardon and weather controlling and—" My breathy rant was disrupted as I looked around the room to see Caitlin, Cisco, and Barry all surrounding a scarlet colored suit. "What is that?" I pointed at the suit.

Cisco smiled proudly, "As I was just about to explain, it's made of a reinforced tripolymer. It's heat and abrasive resistant so it should withstand your moving at high velocity speeds. And the aerodynamic designs should help you maintain control." Barry's eyes lit up with determination the further Cisco got into his explanation. "Plus, it has built in sensors so that we can track your vitals and stay in contact with you from here." The smirk only grew wider on Cisco's face.

"Thanks." Barry replied, it was in that moment that it finally clicked.

The suit was meant for Barry.

"Oh my gosh, you're actually gonna go stop Mardon?" My voice got higher as I reached the ending of my sentence. _I just got Barry back, what if I lose him again? This time for good?_ My brain was screaming at me. Safe to say, I was freaking out internally.

Barry nodded before turning back to Cisco, "Now, how do we find him?"

Caitlin walked over to us with her touchpad in hand. "I retasked STAR Labs satellite to track meteorological abnormalities over Central City. We just got a ping." The three of us crowded around the doctor to see the screen. "Atmospheric pressure dropped 20 millibars in a matter of seconds. I've tracked him to a farm just west of the city."

As she continued to explain, Barry started to get a twinkle in his eye as he looked at Cisco's creation. In a sudden gust of wind, he was in the suit and ready to go. Cisco pointed out a few knobs where Barry could turn on his comm system and such, and Barry tested them to make sure that they worked. Once everything checked out perfectly, I stepped in front of Barry.

He didn't have his mask on yet, but I could see the slight nerves that ran through his emotions. "Whenever you're out there, just… be careful, okay? I need my best friend." I hugged him quickly before he put his mask on and raced out of the building.

As papers floated to the ground all around the room, Cisco just had to make a comment.

"We have _got_ to buy paperweights."

I snorted in amusement as we all sat down in chairs behind the monitors and waited for a response from our newfound hero.

A beeping on the center monitor made Cisco jump and type in a random code. His eyes widened and he whispered, "Oh no." before yelling into the microphone. "Barry! Barry, this thing's getting closer with speeds of over 200 mph increasing. Barry, can you hear me?"

"Yeah! Loud and clear." We silently cheered that he could hear our directions from a long distance.

"If this keeps up, this could become an F5 tornado." Cisco stated into the microphone, face drawn in the total opposite of his normally upbeat goofy expression.

"And it's headed towards the city. How do I stop it?" Caitlin and Cisco scrambled around for an answer. "Guys!" Barry asked for guidance. "What if I unravel it?"

"How the hell are you gonna do that?" Caitlin asked into the mic.

"I'll run around it in the opposite direction, cut off its legs." Barry's voice was almost cut off by the loud sound the tornado was making.

"He'd have to clock 700 mph to do that." Cisco whispered to us.

"Your body might not be able to handle those speeds. You'll die." A tear fell from my eye at Caitlin's words. Goodness, I was doing a lot of crying lately.

"I have to try." My stomach churned as I realized that Barry wasn't going to run away from this.

Cisco started chuckling as flashes started coming in on his monitor. "Ha ha, the suit's holding up!"

"Yeah, but he's not." Caitlin retorted.

"He can do it. I know he can." I breathed out, trying to convince myself that he would come out unscathed.

We heard a series of grunts and thuds, then silence. "Barry? Barry are you still there?" I asked into the mic.

"Yeah, I'm still here. It's too strong! I don't know if I can stop this thing. I just don't think I'm fast enough."

I sighed, "Look, Barry, every single one of us are here because we thought that you have the potential and the ability to do right by this city and stopping Mardon. We believe in you, Barry. _I_ believe in you."

Then a voice I didn't expect to hear spoke up and furthered my motivational speech.

"You can do this, Barry." All three of our heads turned to see Dr. Wells speaking into a third microphone. "You were right, I am responsible for all of this. So many people have been hurt because of me. And when I looked at you, all I saw was another potential victim of my doings and yes, I created this madness but you, Barry. You can stop it. You can do this. Now run, Barry. _Run!"_

There was a series of whooshing sounds, then silence. Nothing but static over Barry's comm signal. For a moment, I feared the worst.

"Barry. Barry? Are you there?" Another pause. "Barry!"

"…It's over." And with those two words, we all breathed a sigh of relief.

"Thank goodness. That would've been a terrible thing to clean up." I moaned, my head facing the ceiling, body slouching in the chair.

Silence. "I don't have tornado insurance."

Take a good guess as to who said that.

* * *

 **Reviews make my world go round and my stories better.**


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Hey all! I'm back at it with another chapter! I'm so very sorry for the wait, I just started my new job and I've been juggling that, school work, my language studies, and trying to get some sleep, so please forgive me! Luckily, the semester's almost over, so I should be updating more often. I hope everyone had a kickass Halloween and that my American readers had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I'm still stuffed full of turkey :)**

 **To my French readers: Je vous appuie tout et je prie pour la paix dans votre pays. Mes bénédictions à vous. (veuillez excuser mon terrible de la grammaire, mon français n'est pas très bon)**

* * *

 **Disclaimer: I don't own The Flash, The CW Network, or DC Comics. That's too bad, cause I'd make a Justice League movie come out this year.**

* * *

Ch 4

"Can…I…get… off… of…this…" I wheezed as I ran as fast as I could. "...DEATH TRAP." Cisco and Caitlin were observing me on their newly patented treadmill. Thing was, it was "Cisco-ed" to handle Barry's speed—which I obviously can't handle— so it was a nightmare for me.

"Just a little longer." Cisco's voice crackled through the speaker in the room. I peeked at the watch on my wrist and my eyes widened.

"It's been _fifty_ minutes? That's it!" I took one step in the direction to get off of the super treadmill and promptly slipped and fell. As I fell, the track of the treadmill skidded against my arms and legs, making me screech in pain. I ended up in a pile at the end of the treadmill, moaning in discomfort. There was a sound of the doors whooshing open as I felt people crowd around me.

"Hey, are you okay?" Someone asked me. I rolled over onto my back, looking into the guilt painted faces of Cisco and Caitlin and I held my arms up.

"I'm probably gonna puke, but who cares, right? Just help me up." Each of them grabbed a hand and hauled me up. As soon as I was on my two feet, my legs started to wobble as they felt like jello. "Why did you let me run for fifty minutes?"

"We were just testing your endurance. Obviously you've been training like I asked you too, but it's not just that." Caitlin explained as she set me on a bed and started probing my legs. "The combined physicality of the athletes that you've studied seemed to have had a positive effect on your lung capacity and muscle atrophy—or should I say lack of it."

"Any normal person would've collapsed after at least 15 minutes of running at the speed you were running. It's not Barry's level of speed, but it's still pretty impressive. Up top!" Cisco added in as he held up a hand to high five me. I gave him a deadpanned expression as Caitlin checked the burns on my arms and legs. Cisco's other hand went up to meet his as he acted as if I had returned the high five. "Go team…" He slinked away to the other side of the room.

I winced as she poked one of the areas by the outside of my right elbow, and she gave a diagnosis right away. "Just some minor track burns. They'll feel painful, but in reality, there's not much damage. They should go away in about a week." She smiled and walked back over to her desk.

"Also, the treadmill is a surprise, so don't tell Barry yet." Cisco called over at me from his desk.

"Great! I think I'm gonna shower and take a nap here, cause my legs feel nonexistent." I carefully slid off the table and to the direction of the shower room. Turning the shower up to almost scalding, I peeled the sweaty clothes off and waddled into the shower.

About 30 minutes later, I stepped out and dried myself off. Putting on the extra clothes that I had brought with me, I dried my fiery locks with a towel. Walking into the main lab with damp curls and a towel around my neck, I heard Caitlin and Barry arguing.

"—metahumans. And aside from Clyde Mardon, we haven't found any."

"And me!" I chirped as my bare feet padded over to the group. "Barry's in his suit." I reached closer and sniffed him lightly. "You smell slightly of ash. Did you go save people from a burning building? Was I really in the shower for that long?" Barry and Cisco smiled at me sheepishly.

Barry focused back on the task at hand, "People in this city need help, and I can help them!"

" _We_ can help them." Cisco added in. Caitlin looked to me to back her up, but I just shrugged. She huffed and looked at a point behind Barry, then she spoke up again.

"Will you please say something?" Barry rolled his eyes and turned around to see Dr. Wells right behind him.

"I think what Caitlin is saying, in her own spectacularly angry way, is that we are just beginning to understand what your body is capable of. Not to sound like a broken record, Mr Allen, because I've told both you and Miss Steele this many times, but I do caution restraint."

"Dr. Wells, I doubt restraint is how you got to be the man you are today." I groaned at Barry's words as that was the exact opposite of the right thing to say at the moment.

"In a wheelchair, a pariah, lack of restraint is what made me these things." He started to turn away. "Know your limits." The mechanical buzzing sound that followed signaled his parting from the room.

Caitlin whipped around and snapped at Barry before following her boss "Don't expect me to patch you up every time you break something." Barry looked confused as Cisco reached around his body and started huddling him over to the computers.

"Hey, anything happen out there today? The sensors in your suit were kicking back some weird telemetry, like your vitals spiked for a few seconds." I eyed the speedster as a flash of uncertainty crossed his face before he plastered a fake smile on his face.

"Never felt better…" Cisco pulled a vibrating phone out of his pocket, then handed it to Barry. He exhaled before answering the phone.

"Hey Joe, everything alright?" I heard a low mumbling over the speaker as Barry looked up at the ceiling then around the room. I took slow, silent steps towards him as he continued to listen to whatever Joe has to say. "I'll be right there." He made another frustrated exhale before hanging up.

"Liar." The one word that came out of my mouth seemed to frighten Barry, as he didn't notice that I was there. His mouth was open as he gaped at me.

"I'm not lying, I'm going to work right now."

I leaned in closer and lowered my voice so that the others wouldn't listen in, "That's not what I'm talking about, Mr. 'Never Felt Better'." His eyes widened as he realized what I was referring to, I nodded before stepping back and motioning for him to go. He sighed before speeding out of the lab, sending papers flying.

"When do you think he'll realize that he forgot his clothes?" Dr. Wells inquired smartly. I chuckled before giving a hypothesis.

"Oh, he'll find out when he gets there, he may just make a pit stop or two." Cisco chuckled before turning to me.

"Why does Barry have to go to work now, but you don't?" I folded my towel as I cut my explanation down to a minimum time of half a minute.

"I've got another officer taking the photos, I'm not due to the office for another 4 hours so I'm gonna use 3 of those hours to take a nap." Plopping the slightly damp towel onto a chair, I slipped on my shoes and grabbed my bag before walking out of the lab. "See you guys!"

* * *

As Kate was taking her nap, an unexpected change was about to finish taking place. Ironically, this specific change was taking it's time emulating itself into her code.

The feeling of the last two unchanged cells in her body morphing and buzzing with an unknown force woke her up.

* * *

My eyes snapped open as I felt a pinch in my gut. Looking at the clock, I gasped as I only had 15 minutes to get dressed and ready for work. Jumping out of bed, I jogged to my closet and rushed to put on some appropriate attire. My keys were snatched off of the counter, red waves flying wildly around me as I rushed out of the door, purse in hand.

Once I left my apartment complex, I started to jog in the direction of the station. Suddenly, I felt a buzzing in my legs and I looked up to see the front of the police station. My eyes widened as I know that I wouldn't have been able to make it on time without— "Super speed." I whispered as I looked at my hand which was twitching and vibrating at an abnormal speed.

Holding my hand down with the other, I walked as fast as I could to my office and closed the door behind me. My mind started racing as I sat at my desk. _How did this happen? I thought I couldn't mimic superhuman powers… Does this mean more tests?_

There was only one person who I knew would understand. Barry.

Walking into his lab, I saw him sitting at a table, trying to turn on our outdated centrifuge. I announced my entrance just as he smacked the side of the machine.

"I don't really know if hitting it is gonna make that dinosaur purr. Wait, wrong analogy…" Barry smiled at me before grabbing the vial out of it's casing.

"Watch this." He smiled before shaking the vial at super speed, acting as a human centrifuge. When he stopped, the particles were all separated into three layers and I smiled. "Cool, right?"

"The coolest." I breathed out as Barry looked at me concerned seeing the slightly frightened look that came up on my face. "There's something that I have to show you." Curiosity lit up his face as I reached across him and grabbed another vial from the rows that he had to separate. Holding it in my hand, I started to shake it slowly at a human speed, before my hand sped up to where it matched Barry's speed not even a minute ago. His eyes grew as I stopped my hand, showing almost the same results as the vial he shook.

"When…?" He started stuttering.

"Today. It just happened on the way here, my hand was vibrating and I don't know how, Barry. I'm scared." He got up and hugged me. "I thought I was supposed to have a lid on this thing. I thought we knew everything about my," I lowered my voice down to a whisper, "ability."

Pulling out of the hug and looking me in the eye, he comforted me and was firm in dissipating my worries. "Everything will be okay, you saw how fast I got a handle on my speed, you'll probably do it even faster. They know what they're doing at STAR Labs. It's all good." He grabbed the vial that I partially separated and finished the job, getting up and going over to the board. As I watched him take off his gloves, I saw him slump a little and run into the table.

I ran over in alarm and took his face in my hands. "Barry?" I patted his cheek a couple of times, "Are you okay?" He blinked heavily a couple of times before looking into my eyes for a moment. Putting his hands on my wrists, he moved my hands away from his face.

"Perfectly fine. Nothing's wrong." He smiled exactly like he did to Cisco earlier.

"You're doing it again."

His head tilted in confusion "Doing what?"

"That thing where you act like you're okay, but no one's gonna find out about what's really wrong until it's absolutely necessary. What's going on, Barry?"

He sighed and turned his head to the side quickly before looking back at me, "Nothing. I'm fine. I promise." I rolled my eyes and scoffed.

"Okay, whatever."

"This is all of your fault." Iris walked in to the lab in a gorgeous purple dress. "I could've taken European Folklore to cover my sociology requirement, but no! You said to 'Take journalism, Iris. Reporters have all of the fun.'" Iris narrowed her eyes as she leaned in Barry's direction. "Guess what, Barry? Reporters have none of the fun. Journalism is boring. I'm bored. I'm blaming you." She deadpanned.

I snickered. "And _that_ is why you don't take advice on class credits for communications from a guy who has a degree in _forensic science_." Iris narrowed her eyes even more and glared at me. I smiled innocently and she turned to look back at Barry, who seemed to be in a daze.

"What? Why are you staring at me like that?" Iris' words seemed to snap Barry out of whatever stupor he was in.

"You look really nice." He walked over to another table to shuffle through some papers. Iris looked confused as she turned around and accepted his compliment.

"Thanks. Why don't you look nice?" Barry's head popped up from his paperwork with a quizzical expression on his face. "This afternoon? Suit and tie? The university is giving Simon Stagg—"

"Simon Stagg…" Barry's face took on an expression of recollection as he uttered the name.

"…Some big award and you agreed…"

"To explain the science stuff for your article, it's all coming back to me now." He had a guilty look planted on his face as he finished Iris' sentence.

"How fast can you get home and change?" Iris had a forgiving smile on as she looked up at her best friend.

"Pretty fast, I reckon, right Bear?" His head snapped towards me as I smirked, back to my normal mood. I leaned back in Barry's chair and put my feet up on his desk, making myself comfortable.

Eddie walked into the lab, "Hey Allen, Steele, Joe asked me to see where you guys are at on the evidence from the gun store shooting." He gave Iris a fleeting glance. "Oh, hey Iris."

Iris now resembled a school girl as she played with her dress a little before answering, "Detective." She gave him the old up-and-down look before I couldn't take it anymore.

"Oh for the love of God, just kiss already. There's enough sexual tension here that you could pass it on through the air. I could plant a wet one on Barry right now." I heard a choking sound coming from Barry's direction as he started coughing frantically, a blush rising on the speedster's neck. I snickered at Barry's reaction, then suddenly he seemed to compose himself as he backed up the first half of my statement.

"Please, guys, go ahead. We already know, remember?" Barry walked over to his computer and looked at a few files on it. He seemed a little tense, so I put a hand on his shoulder. He relaxed a bit, and we both cringed at the awkward sound of the lovely couple kissing. Initially I was pissed—to say the least— at Iris for not telling me about her relationship with Eddie, but I eventually got over my anger and I became genuinely happy that she found someone who seems to really love her.

"Ah, thanks for being so cool about this Barry, Kate. I know it's not easy keeping a big secret." Eddie thanked us with a giddy smile.

I turned and rolled my eyes and muttered, "If only…" I thought I heard Barry mutter something too, but I didn't catch it.

"I'm going to STAR Labs." I told Barry, before going to grab my things from my office. "See you guys later, have fun!" All three of them waved at me as I left swiftly. As soon as I left the station, I walked into a nearby alley and used my speed to run all the way to my destination.

* * *

As I zoomed into the main lab of STAR Labs, I skidded to a stop to see papers flying everywhere.

"Ah, come on, Barry! We just reorganized these papers to—" Cisco's rant was cut short as he looked up to see that it wasn't Barry who caused the mess. "You're not Barry. Where is he?"

"At Stagg Industries. Heh." I shrugged nonchalantly.

"Well, if he's all the way over there, and you're here and the papers…." Cisco's eyes widened as he put the pieces together. "No way!"

"Surprise?" I cringed slowly and put my hands out as if I were showcasing something. Cisco put his hands over his mouth in shock, before slowly letting them down and giggling like a schoolgirl.

"This. Is. Awesome. We have two speedsters now! Imagine, you guys could become a crime fighting duo." Cisco was practically vibrating with joy by this point. Then his eyes grew wide and he gasped, as if he had a sudden epiphany. "I already have your names together. You ready for this?"

I blinked at the engineer, who took my silence as a yes and continued. He put his hands up as if he were describing a marquee.

"Flash and Lady Flash. Pretty great, huh?" He smirked at his creative idea.

"I don't know Cisco. We don't even know if this is a permanent thing. I can probably just copy super abilities for a little while. I could lose these powers after 24 hours." I shrugged and sat down in a chair.

"Maybe, maybe not. We'll just have to find out. Once we come across another metahuman, we'll know for sure." Cisco smiled at me as Caitlin walked in with a hand around Barry's arm.

"Hey, what's up?" I perked up as Caitlin sat Barry down on a bed and started hooking him up to an EKG and started checking his vitals.

"You tell her, Barry." Caitlin bit out as she continued to rush around, tapping on monitors. "Go on!" I turned to Barry, eyebrow raised in expectation.

"I passed out at Stagg's award ceremony. Those guys who robbed the gun store were there and they took everyone's jewelry. I saved a security guard, but when I tried to go after the crew… I passed out." My eyes widened as I stalked closer to Barry.

"You _what_?" My voice screeched as Barry and Cisco both leaned away from me. But before I could continue, Caitlin interrupted.

"You lied to us. How could you not tell us you're experiencing dizzy spells? We're your _doctors._ God _knows_ what's going on inside your body, your cells are in a constant state of flux." The doctor had a fire in her eyes as she chastised Barry. "You could be experiencing cardiopulmonary failure or a transient ischemic attack." Barry turned to Dr. Wells to translate the complicated medical term.

"Mini heart attack." He passed off nonchalantly. "Probably not."

"You of all people should know that in science we share, we do not keep secrets." Caitlin stormed off and Cisco walked around to Barry's front side.

"Wow, I haven't seen anyone make her that angry since Ronnie." My eyebrows went up in recognition at the name. Cisco handed Dr. Wells a tablet and went over to his computer.

"Ronnie was Caitlin's fiancé, the one that died the night of the accelerator explosion?" Barry looked from Cisco to Wells for an answer, and the latter was the first to respond.

"Yeah. He is… missed." Barry looked down in shame. "Now, let's figure out why this is happening to you."

"C'mon." Barry's head snapped in my direction as I nodded towards the training room doors. "I'll bet Cisco has something really cool to show you."

"Wait, you're not mad at me?" He questioned as he got off of the table and took a couple of steps towards me. I crossed my arms.

"Oh, I was, but I think Caitlin's tongue lashing was more than enough penance for not telling either of us." One of his eyebrows rose and he knocked his hip into my side making me stumble.

"Tongue lashing? Wow, that's old school. Like, _old_ old school." I scrunched my nose and Barry laughed as I pushed him playfully into the training room.

As Barry and Cisco talked through the glass, I turned to Dr. Wells and started breaking the news.

"Dr. Wells? You told me to come to you with any changes concerning my powers and I don't know how exactly to say this, but I've sort of… contracted… Barry's ability." Although he didn't seem very surprised, his head turned towards me and his eyebrows rose slightly. "I found out just this morning, I literally ran to work and acted as a human centrifuge. You can ask Barry." Dr. Wells seemed to contemplate my words for a second, before turning to Caitlin and stating calmly.

"Dr. Snow, check his glucose levels." Caitlin's eyes traveled over to a certain point of the screen and I could see her practically restraining herself from physically facepalming. As she started to speak into the mic, Wells turned his head back to me. "We'll discuss your advancements after we get Barry on track with his—" but his words were interrupted as a thump sounded out from the training room.

Our heads swiveled to see Barry's unconscious body atop a pile of broken boxes and styrofoam packing peanuts. I gasped and zoomed into the training room and quickly checked his body for any immediate injuries. Seeing none, I breathed out a sigh of relief and turned to a gaping Caitlin, a grinning Cisco, and a pensive Dr. Wells to shout, "He's okay! I don't think he's broken anything."

I started to pick up Barry by his shoulders, but seeing as I was still alone, I looked through the window and whined. "Oh come on, is nobody gonna help me with this?"

* * *

I had left the lab shortly after Barry woke up. I thought I saw Joe on my way out, but I was moving too fast to think twice about it. Once I reached my apartment, I pulled out my laptop and searched up every video I could on martial arts, parkour, weapon use, anything resourceful in a fight.

Before this morning, I was honestly feeling like a huge let down. Yes, I have this "extraordinary" gift, but what could I do with it? Become an olympic athlete? Compete in a dance competition? I didn't see how I could use my ability for good, how I could contribute to society. I hadn't fought any crime, only Barry has. I figured that Barry shouldn't be out there alone, no matter how fast he is or how much he thinks he can take it. Having this super speed evened the field a little.

Plus you know what they say: four fists are better than two.

Okay, maybe not.

But I spent the rest of the night, eyes tingling with new information and movements being imbedded into my brain. I soon fell asleep to the sounds of an MMA KO compilation from 2009.

The next day at work, I was sitting in Barry's office, wasting time while waiting for my photos to develop. Barry was roaming around with his gloves on, processing different pieces of evidence. Munching on a donut, I saw Joe walk in and I waved. He gave me a stern smile and looked towards Barry, who rolled his eyes as he walked to the pile of donut boxes.

"Come to yell at me again?" Barry mumbled while looking down. Joe flinched, but just barely, before carrying on.

"Simon Stagg's head of security was murdered last night." I saw confusion and curiosity run across his face before Joe continued. "The coroner took some skin samples, hopefully they belong to the killer. See if you can find a match."

"Can't be a coincidence, Stagg's benefit was attacked last night." Barry's statement stopped Joe on his way to the door.

"I'm going to interview Stagg now."

Barry stepped forward. "I'll come with you."

Joe's eyes hardened, "You're job is in here, stay in here and do it." My head turned back and forth between the two men. I could sense the hostility. As Joe left, I rose from my seat, wiped the crumbs from my hands and started towards Barry.

"Okay, what the hell was that?"

Barry's jaw clenched before he bit out an answer. "He doesn't think I should be doing what I want to do. Saving people, stopping crime. He doesn't get it, the police can't handle metahumans, I can. _We_ can." I raised an eyebrow at the chill to Barry's words.

"Did you ever think that maybe Joe's just scared that you'll get hurt?" Barry's eyes flashed with betrayal at my answer.

"You're taking his side? I can't believe this." I shook my head at Barry's frustrated tone.

"I'm not taking sides here. Just, look at it from his perspective. If someone you loved said that they wanted to go throw themselves into a burning buildings and in front of bullets, would you be happy about it?" Barry's eyes blazed before softening slightly, "I'm just saying—"

I was cut off by Iris entering the lab. "Why is my dad mad at you?" Barry turned away from me, it was then that I realized that we ended up in very close approximation to each other. He started working on the skin samples while answering Iris' question.

"Work stuff." I slumped onto a stool, catching Iris glimpse between us for a second before steeling her eyes on Barry. He turned around, as if sensing her glare on him before asking, "Why are you mad at me?"

"You were supposed to meet me at Jitters to give me some scientific background for my article." Barry sighed and pulled his gloves off in a upset manner.

"And I didn't show up."

Iris continued to lay the guilt on, "Now I have to come up with a new article topic in 24 hours or I fail the assignment."

Barry took a few steps forward, "Iris, I'm—"

But Iris wasn't having any of it, "Don't say that you're sorry, okay? I know that you are. What I don't know is what is going on with you. With both of you." I jumped in surprise as her glare turned onto me. "We grew up pretty close to each other in the past few years, the three of us. You don't think that I can't tell when you're happy? Or depressed, or sad, or lost?" Her brown hair formed a curtain around her face as she briskly poured her sugar into her cup of coffee.

"Now, I'm gonna ask you both one more time, Barry Allen and Katherine Steele and you better be honest with me. What the hell is going on?" I saw a blur around Barry for a split second before his computer beeped. "We are not done talking about this." Iris stated firmly. Barry and I made eye contact, I'm sure we were both silently hoping to avoid that future conversation.

The three of us soon crowded around the monitor, with two sets of eyebrows creasing together in confusion. "That's impossible." Barry murmured. Iris leaned in to see what the damage was. "There was a murder last night, these skin cells belong to the murderer." His head shook in disbelief as he furthered in his explanation. "But these cells are naive. Stem cells."

"They can copy any cell that the body needs, but they're only found in babies. This is beyond weird." I finished Barry's elaboration and scratched my head questioningly.

"So, what, this killer is newborn?" Iris looked to Barry and I for an answer.

"Not quite." I whispered as a thousand questions started to pop up in my mind.

"Well, that's enough weird science for the day for me. I'm gonna go. You two have fun." Iris sauntered out of the lab.

"I'm gonna run these files down to Singh, you stay here." Barry started gathering a stack of papers together.

I sat in his twisty chair and swerved in his direction, narrowing my eyes. "It's not like I'm doing anything else at the moment, Mr. Bossy Pants." The corners of my lips turned up, showing the playfulness in my statement. Barry rolled his eyes and smiled before exiting the lab.

After a couple of minutes of whistling and playing Tetrus on my phone, I jumped when Barry zoomed back into the lab, a grave look on his face. Walking over to the distraught man, I saw him open his locker which contained his red suit.

"What's going on?"

Barry's face stayed stone serious,a complete 180 to his mood earlier. "Stagg is being attacked at his factory. Joe is there." As soon as I realized what Barry was up to, I immediately tried to object.

"Barry, don't you dar—" but before I could finish my sentence, he was out in a flash. I now stood alone in an empty lab, papers fluttering around the room. My fiery red curls were now distributed sloppily and tangled around my head and shoulders. I blew a curl out from in front of my eyes in a huff.

"Damn it."

* * *

 **I love reviews like I love peanut butter. And I love peanut butter. A lot.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: I don't own The Flash, the comic character or the CW television show. *cries for days***

* * *

Ch. 5

I ran as fast as my new found speed would carry me over to STAR Labs. Running into the main operations room, Cisco practically leaped out of his chair at my arrival.

"Quick! Barry's gone to face the meta-human that's attacking Stagg at his factory." Cisco shrugged his shoulders at me, as if asking what the big deal was.

I rolled my eyes, " _Alone._ He needs backup! Do you have anything I can wear that won't burn up?" Cisco suddenly sprinted into action, smiling as he opened a drawer and pulled out a suit. It was a full black body suit, with accents of blue on the sleeves and legs. The torso looked to be sturdy, but after putting my hands on it and pulling and bending, I discovered the material was somewhat flexible, which I liked. He threw me a blue mask and I put it on immediately, tying my fiery hair up in a ponytail in the process.

"It's a work in progress, but it's made of the same material that makes up Barry's suits. Like you said, you might not have Barry's speed forever, so I'm going to try to find a material that will adjust like your body does." He tossed the suit to me. "It also has a comm built in so that I can talk to you and Barry." I smiled at the intricate design of the suit and quickly zoomed out and changed.

"Thanks Cisco! I'll be in touch." I yelled as I ran out of the room at normal speed. Once I left the doors of STAR Labs, I was off to Stagg Industries. Speeding around to the back entrance, I saw Joe standing outside the door.

"Where is he?" I questioned, Joe quickly turned around, gun poised to shoot. I put my hands up quickly in surrender, showing that I wasn't a threat. "Woah, woah, Joe! Gun down, please." I started to whisper. "It's me, Kate." I pulled my mask up a little to reveal my entire face.

Joe's eyes widened, "Girl, what are you doing here?"

"No time to explain now, Joe. Now, where is Barry?" I persisted. After a moment of contemplation, Joe finally gave up, pointing his thumb behind him at the door.

"He's inside, messing with the gunmen. Be careful, okay? I nodded at Joe's concern for me, then sped inside to find Barry being kicked at by a team of men.

It probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, but I yelled out at them. "Hey!" Four faces looked at me, and one set of eyes widened, recognizing me.

"What are you doing here? Get out of here!" Barry yelled from the floor. Ignoring the scarlet speedster, I decided to antagonize the men even more, hoping to distract them; therefore giving Barry an open window to take them down.

"Come on, let's see if the big bad men can get beat up by a girl." Two of the men sprang at me, and my body instantly reacted, remembering the martial arts videos I had watched the night before. I jumped up, grabbing one of the men by the neck, twisting my body around him to hook my feet together around the other guy's neck. I shifted my body to the side, flipping them both over and body slamming them into the ground. Taking them down easily, I got up and stood in a ready stance for any of the others to attack.

Seeing one of the men start to vibrate and separate, my eyes widened as I saw two more of him come out of the man in the middle. "Wow, it's like a real life funhouse mirror." I quipped, ignoring the by now familiar tingling behind my eyes.

All of the men but two pulled out their guns, half aiming at me and the other half aiming at Barry. Barry zoomed off just as the guns started to fire off. Fearing for my friend more than for myself, I ran after Barry.

Running to a building by the train station, I saw Barry stagger forward and lean back against a fence. He glared at the direction that he came from, still angry about losing to the metahuman criminal.

"Barry! Are you okay?" I ran to his side, fingers hovering over the cuts on his face. He pushed my hands away, taking a frustrated breath.

"I'm fine, just a little beat up." He answered eventually. The adrenaline was still running through me, so I jumped on my toes a little, hoping it would wear off soon.

"Okay, let's get you back to STAR Labs can get you cleaned up, okay?" He nodded. His eyes suddenly darted to my side and widened.

"Kate, wai—" but before he could get another syllable out, I was off.

As I ran into the main room of STAR Labs, Barry sped to my side, holding my shoulders. He cried out, "Cisco! Caitlin! We need some help in here!" I furrowed my brows in confusion.

"I thought you said you were okay?" I asked Barry, but he shook his head.

"It's not me who needs help." Cocking my head to the side, I looked down to where Barry's stare was boring a hole into. As the adrenaline in my body started to wear off, that was when I felt it. My eyes widened as I saw the fabric of my black suit soaked with blood, a hole the size of a bullet in the torso near my hip. Putting my fingers near the site of the wound, I winced as I felt the bullet in my flesh. My hand came back shaking and covered in thick blood, and Barry's eyes widened even more.

I vaguely heard Cisco and Caitlin come running up behind me, then gasping at the sight of me. My vision started to glaze over, and I started swaying from the shock.

"I got shot?" The question gurgled out of my mouth. Black spots danced around the room as I looked from person to person for an answer.

"Yeah." Barry answered me quietly.

"Oh. Cool." Lifting my thumb and smiling drunkenly, I felt a pair of arms catch my falling body before everything went dark.

* * *

For a while, there was nothing. My body just seemed to be in a state of limbo, I felt nothing. But eventually, my body started to register outside activity one sense at a time. First, my nose breathed in a lungful of sanitized air. Then my hands squeezed at a familiar pair of sheets, rubbing it's contents between my fingers and thumb. Voices soon came up from the darkness, loud voices. Arguing voices. Mixed with the sound of an EKG, it wasn't the most pleasant of greetings from the outside world.

Finally my eyes opened, staring at the stark white ceiling above me. My mind recognized the voices to be Cisco and Caitlin's, but the words were practically indistinguishable.

"—how are we gonna—-"

"—don't know what we're—"

"—kinda really freaky to—"

"—no, we're not asking her—"

Finally I spoke up, voice a hoarse whisper from lack of use. "Asking who to what?" The voices stopped. I heard a pair of footsteps rush towards my bed, Caitlin's head leaning over my laying body.

"Oh good, you're awake." She gave me a tight smile before pressing a button, my bed moving mechanically so that I could sit up properly. I winced at a sore pain in my side, but didn't move to touch it as I felt bandages wrapped around my torso. "Yeah, I wouldn't move too much, you're still healing."

"What happened? Where's Barry, is he okay? How long have I been out?" I put my hands to my face, pressing them against my cheeks, cold against warmth.

Cisco walked over with a touch pad in his hands, "Captain Clone—that's what we're calling him now— shot you." A goofy smile came over Cisco's face at the new nickname he came up with for our new meta-villain, but it faded quickly at Caitlin's stern glance. "You've only been out for about 6 hours. Barry left as soon as he got patched up, just a little bit before your surgery." Hurt must've filled my features at the answer to where my best friend went, because Cisco quickly shut up.

"Luckily, the bullet missed any vital organs that were near your lower hip area. If the bullet had landed more than a fraction of an inch lower, it would have shattered your hip bone. You need to be more careful." Caitlin lectured as she tested my basic motor functions, tapping random points on my body, pointing a light in my eyes to see how my pupils react, rotating my leg back and forth to see how it moved in relativity to my hips, etc.

"But it's not a big deal, right? I can heal because I have Barry's speed." But at the look that passed between the two scientists in front of me, I became skeptical. "What? What's going on?"

Caitlin distracted herself with the machinery around me for another minute, obviously stalling for time before I gently but firmly grabbed her wrist, demanding that she tell me what was happening immediately. "Well, after we removed the bullet, you seemed to be healing like Barry would and everything was fine. But, after a couple of hours, you sort of…" The doctor winced and looked to Cisco to try and explain her thoughts.

…stopped." Cisco finished her sentence. My eyes widened as my head turned back and forth between the two.

"What do you mean, 'stopped'? As in 'stopped healing'? Altogether?" My voice grew more frantic as I was contemplating why I wasn't healing anymore.

"Not exactly. I took a look at a sample of some dead tissue around the bullet that we removed, and comparing it to Barry's, it doesn't have the same structure it once did to replicate his speed." Caitlin explained, taking the pad from Cisco and showing it to me. One side of the screen showed cells that had a sort of lightning pass between them, while the other side showed just normal cells floating in their matter.

"So, you're saying that I don't have Barry's powers anymore?" Cisco shook his head at my blunt question. "Well, what's the catch? Don't think I missed the little bits of the arguments you had earlier while I was waking up."

"It seems that you lost Barry's speed… because you picked up someone else's ability." I rose an eyebrow at Caitlin's vague words, then as the memory started coming back in my mind, my mouth dropped open.

"You mean… I can copy that guy's powers? From back at Stagg Industries? I can make copies of myself? Wait, how do you know this?" Questions fired out of my mouth, as I sat up even more, ignoring the pull at my bandages. I pulled the IV from out of my arm, taking a cotton ball from my bedside table and pressing it on the point of entry. Sliding my legs off of the bed, I put one foot on the floor, then the other. As my body got used to standing, I felt a sharp sting in my side. Cisco's hands hovered around my body awkwardly as I took one shaky step after another.

Walking into the main meeting room, my suspicions were confirmed as I looked at the back of another body. Wavy red hair tumbled down a familiar black suit with blue accents. A natural instinct in my mind told me to think of turning around. Feeling a connection wave out of me and to the body, it turned around to reveal my face. Same brown eyes, same sloped nose and pink mouth.

It was a clone.

The moment it took a step towards Cisco and I, the former let out an uncharacteristically high pitched squeal and jumped behind me, as if I were a human shield. I chuckled at Cisco's actions and patted him on the shoulder comfortingly. "It's okay Cisco, she's not gonna hurt you. I feel this sort of… connection to her… it's so weird." I smiled as Cisco came back up to stand next to me.

As we both observed the details of my clone, Caitlin walked up to the two of us, stack of clothes in her hands. "Here's some extra clothes for you to change into." Just noticing that I was in only a hospital gown and underwear, I jumped and gratefully took the clothes from Caitlin's waiting hands, walking back into the hospital room to change.

Pulling on the jeans were easy enough, they were low-rise, so they didn't touch the bandage on my hips and torso. But the loose shirt that Caitlin had given me was a bit of a challenge. After struggling to raise my right arm completely and put the blouse on without tearing it, I huffed with the blouse covering half of my face, bra and stomach exposed and called out. "Can I get a little help please?"

I heard sneakers squeak excitedly against the floor before they stopped abruptly. I heard Caitlin's voice drawl out, " _Not_ you." and then heels clacked into the room. She politely pulled my at my limbs, eventually getting the blouse over my head and down to cover my torso.

"Phew. Thanks, Caitlin." She nodded at me as I fixed the mess of waves on my head. "So, where's Barry?" Cisco peeked into the room, entering fully once he saw that I was dressed. Sitting down on the bed, Cisco answered the question.

"He quit."

Jerking my head in Cisco's direction, my mouth almost dropped open again in surprise and shock. "He _what_?"

"He quit. Said that he got his ass handed to him and that it was his fault that you to shot, so he quit." I shook my head, not accepting these words.

"No, no. There has to be another reason that he did that. Barry doesn't just quit like that. I'm sorry guys, but I'm gonna go." Bending as far as I could, I slid on my boots one at a time, quickly walking out of the doors of STAR Labs.

* * *

As the cab I took drove along the streets of Central City, my mind started to contemplate the reasons why Barry would quit. The hurt at knowing that Barry didn't even stay at STAR Labs to check if I was okay came rushing back.

Once the vehicle had reached a certain corner, I paid the cab fare and walked out, rushing down to Jitters. The cafe was empty, save for two figures inside sitting at a table.

Opening the door, two heads jerked over to look my way as I stepped inside. Green eyes widened as Barry stood up and rushed over to me, hands held out as if waiting for me to fall over.

"Kate, what are you doing here?" He asked briskly, then forcing his tone into a whisper. "You just _got shot_ a couple of hours ago, you shouldn't even be out of bed. Even with the super healing, that's gotta take some time." He looked back to see Iris walking up to us, confusion covering her face.

My face drew blank, voice in a monotone state, conveying that I had nothing to hide. "I'm fine."

Iris quickly stopped at my words, "O-kay. I'm just gonna go clean up a little in the back. You two talk." She scurried back behind the counter and through the doors to the kitchen, leaving Barry and I alone in the main part of the cafe.

"What's up?" Barry asked, voice back at a normal volume. I pulled my shirt up, revealing the bandage covering my hip that now had dots of blood on it. Barry's eyes widened in horror. "Is it not healed all the way? I thought that with the speed comes the—"

"It stopped healing. Halfway through." A beat of silence. "I picked up Black's power and it stunted the healing process, so I have a half-healed bullet wound right now." My lower lip started to tremble as I asked the question that I've been wanting to ask since I woke up. "Why did you leave?"

Barry started to stutter, as he couldn't come up with a suitable answer. I shook my head, lowering the blouse.

"Why did you quit, Barry? And tell me truth, don't give me that 'I got beat up' crap because it hasn't stopped you before so—"

"It's my fault, okay!" Barry yelled at me. I flinched at the sudden outburst, and he seemed to notice because his tone of voice dialed down immediately. "It's my fault you got shot."

I scoffed, "Don't be ridiculous…" But Barry seemed dead set on convincing me of his faults.

"It is! If I hadn't been so cocky and stupid and selfish, if I hadn't just left Stagg Industries without even taking you with me, if I hadn't left you there… You'd be fine. You'd be safe." Barry sat down in a booth and plopped his head in his hands exhaustedly. "I can't keep anyone safe." My best friend's shoulders sagged with such defeat it broke my heart. I couldn't stand to see him like this, so I was gonna do something about it.

"Bartholomew Allen, don't you dare tell me that you can't keep anyone safe because if what you've been doing for the past few weeks isn't keeping people safe, then what is?" Barry knows that I only use his full name when I'm at my most serious, so he lifted his head to look me in the eye. Green met brown. I gathered my thoughts as I sat across from him before continuing to speak. "You. Are. The Flash. That name will _mean_ something to a lot of people someday, I can feel it. You've saved countless lives since you've discovered your speed. And I know that if you stay with STAR Labs," I grabbed his hand with both of my own, offering my support. "The Flash can save many more. I'll be right here the entire way. Joe, Cisco, Caitlin, Dr. Wells… we're all here for you Bear."

Barry took a second to process my words, eyes darting between my face, my hip, and our connected hands. Looking into my eyes once more, I found a spark of…something… in them. It wasn't lightning, like I've seen in his eyes before he runs, no. No, it was something else, something foreign. But I couldn't tell you what it was.

Just as he opened his mouth, his phone buzzed from within his pocket. Our hands disconnected as he went to answer it. "What, Caitlin?" I heard a faint voice through the receiver and Barry's eyes widened, looking to me.

Hanging up, Barry rushed out of the booth. "Come on, we gotta go."

"What's going on?" I cried out as I walked in front of him, stopping the speedster temporarily.

"No time to explain. Iris! Kate and I are heading out!" After he yelled at our friend over his shoulder, Barry quickly picked me up bridal style and whooshed us out of Jitters and over to STAR Labs. I buried my head into Barry's chest so that I wouldn't get whiplash or bugs in my face. As soon as Barry set me down in STAR Labs, two problems came to light.

One.

"Ah, my shirt's on fire!"

And two.

"Danton Black!"

The first problem was quickly eliminated as Caitlin rushed over with a fire extinguisher and put out the flaming blouse. Singed pieces of the top started to fall off until I eventually just brushed them away. I stood in what was now a crop top and positioned myself to fight Black, but he was unmoving. He didn't even seem to have an expression on his face.

"Barry it's okay." Caitlin told Barry as the attention went from me to the still Black.

But Barry still didn't seem to have caught on yet, "It is not okay. Black is here and he's… Just standing there." Barry soon relaxed and moved closer to him. "That's not him, is it?"

Dr. Wells rolled up and confirmed Barry's inquiry. "It's one of his replicates."

Barry looked the clone up and down, confused "How did you get it?"

"I grew him." Caitlin answered, bright smile on her face.

"Okay, you sound way too happy about that." I muttered, but was ignored as Caitlin explained to Barry how she cloned Black using DNA from Barry's suit.

"…look for the one showing signs of weakness or fatigue. He's the prime." I tuned back in just as Caitlin was giving Barry's direction on how to stop Black.

"Just a theory, but one you might want to put to the test, Mr. Allen." Dr. Wells advised.

Cisco walked up, small package in hand, "Plus, I whipped up these high calorie protein bars for you to keep your metabolism up." As he handed barry the bar, the Black clone grunted and moved towards a screaming Caitlin.

Joe soon ran in, gun pointed straight at the clone, and fired off three shots, taking it down. "Any more of them?" He scanned the room.

"No." Caitlin answered crisply, shaking her head.

Joe soon looked to me and blinked, asking "Where's your shirt?"

"On the floor. Burnt." I pointed to the charred remains of my blouse that laid at my feet. Joe nodded in understanding, but added a grimace into his expression.

"Come on, we gotta change your bandages." Caitlin called me over with a wave of her hand, leading me into an open infirmary room.

I sat down on the bed, watching as Caitlin unraveled the bandages and wincing when I saw the stitches holding my still healing flesh together.

After a moment of silence, Caitlin spoke up. "I know you wanna go out there and protect Barry, or at least help him, but please be more careful next time. Okay? No matter what power you contract next."

Surprised at her concern, I nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I know I'm not invincible. I have my limits. No more hesitation in front of guns." I chuckled, trying to lighten the mood. Caitlin cracked a smile as she finished changing the bandage, giving me a STAR Labs sweat shirt to put on over it, since my current shirt was in a pile of ash on the floor.

We both walked out to find Cisco, Dr. Wells, and Joe standing in the middle of the room. But no Barry.

"Where'd Barry go?" I asked, looking around the room for an answer.

"Off to fight for this city." Joe answered, proud smile on his face. My heart warmed as I realized that Joe had given Barry the final push he needed to become The Flash again.

"Thanks Joe. He really needed that boost from you." I smiled sincerely. Thoughts of mischief quickly ran across my mind as I called my clone out from it's hiding spot in one of the back rooms.

Making it sneak up behind Cisco, I mimicked tapping him on the shoulder. He turned around and made another high-pitched squeal when my twin yelled "BOO!" in his face. Joe's head whipped between my laughing clone and I, eyes wide as can be.

"Oh, that was priceless."

"I think I just had a minor heart attack." Cisco breathed out harshly, hand to his chest to help slow his heart rate down. My peals of laughter turned into near silent giggles, my clone following my movements to a T.

"I'm going in." Barry informed us over his comm. The mood of the room soon turned serious as I looked to his vitals chart. After a moment of just a racing heart, Barry's pain levels went up and he started spasming.

"What are they doing to him?" I whispered in distress. Soon, we all heard a grunt and heavy breathing as I assume Barry recovered from whatever happened.

Caitlin leaned towards the microphone. "Remember Barry, find the prime."

"There's too many of them to fight." Barry wheezed out. Dr. Wells rolled forward.

"Barry, you need to isolate the prime." He explained calmly.

Barry breathed harshly again, "I can't. It's impossible."

"It's not. Nothing is impossible, Barry. You taught me that. You can do this." Joe had stepped forward and spoke into the microphone with a warm, encouraging voice.

I decided to finish the encouraging by saying only three words. "Do it, Barry." My words were said softly and with a half smile, filled with belief in the speedster's ability to take down this guy.

We heard a yell and multiple grunts before Barry finally chuckled over his comm. Joe called out in concern, but Barry quickly confirmed that he was alright.

"I'm fine. I'm fine." We all smiled at each other at Barry's victory. "It's done." But suddenly we heard a crashing sound and a yell from Barry.

"Hang on! No, don't!" Then silence.

"Barry?" I questioned. "What happened."

For a moment, silence. Then he finally answered, tone solemn. "I'm coming back to the lab."

* * *

We all stood and watched as the Central City News reported Danton Black's death. I could see Barry's shoulders tense up as he tried to blame himself again for someone else's doing.

"I tried to save him."

Dr. Wells cut in. "Doesn't sound like he wanted to be saved. Some people, when they break…" He shook his head slightly. "…They can't be put back together again."

"Some people heal even stronger." Barry retaliated, looking back at me with a small smile, which I reciprocated.

"I hope so." Dr. Wells answered.

"Well, at least Multiplex wont be able to hurt anyone anymore." I raised my eyebrows in approval at the new name. Cisco smirked, "Told you I'd come up with a cool name."

"Oh, it's leagues better than Captain Clone." I chuckled after saying Cisco's trial nickname for our latest villain. "I mean, Black wasn't even Captain material." I jested.

"I may be the one in the suit, doing all the running…" Barry sighed. "But when I'm out there, helping people, making a difference… you're all out there with me." We all sat or stood up straighter at Barry's kind words to us.

"I realized something." We all waited for his answer, which he immediately gave. "We were all struck by that lightning." A quick moment of silence, then I quipped.

"Eh, it's a bit corny, but I'll take it." I smiled a bright smile and Barry smiled back at me before leaving.

Cisco soon turned to me and inquired, "Was Captain Clone really that bad?"

"Eh, wasn't your best. But it wasn't your worst." I stood out of my chair and winced at the soreness of my still healing bullet wound. "Well, since I'm still a wounded little chihuahua, I'm gonna go home and rest. See you guys later!" The three scientist all waved as I exited the room and eventually the building.

* * *

 **Sorry if the ending is a bit wack, I was in a bit of a stupor as to how to end the chapter. I also apologize for the long wait for this update, I've been so focused on school I haven't been able to pay much attention to this story lately. But I will be updating more in the future! I have a lot planned for Kate in this story, especially when we get to season 2, so get ready.**

 **I appreciate reviews of any and all kinds. Thank you. See you next update.**


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer: I own nothing Flash related except for this story and my OC(s) :)**

* * *

Ch. 6

"I mean, what is the big deal with Star Wars?" Punch.

"Star Trek is a much more intelligent series filled with adventure and _actual_ science." Another punch.

"Why would I wanna watch some guys play with some glow sticks when I could deduce logic with Spock?" I huffed as I blocked another mechanical dummy from striking me. I heard Cisco gasp as I saw Barry zoom next to the engineer in his training clothes, the pair staring at me incredulously.

"Oh no, you did not just diss Star Wars!" Cisco yelled into the microphone, pointing at me as if I had just crushed his dreams with my bare hands. "You dare insult only the greatest sci-fi franchise in history?"

I paused in my movements, my body slick with sweat, exposed torso and shoulders shiny. My sports bra and workout capris were practically soaked. My baby red hairs clung to my forehead and my ponytail was practically dripping. I placed my hands on my waist and cocked my hip out, smirking. "What are you talking about Cisco? I didn't insult Star Trek one bit."

I could sense another robot sneaking my way from behind, and my body sprung into action. I thrust my elbow backwards, hitting the electronic dummy in it's side. Turning swiftly, I made a high fan kick and brought my foot down on it's head, pushing the dummy forcefully to the ground. There was a moment of silence.

Looking back up at the window to the main room, I saw sixteen eyes staring at me. Some were in awe, but one of the four pair was in… understanding? Wisdom? I couldn't tell exactly what it was that the good doctor saw in me in that moment. If only I knew what was going to become of him.

All of the robots lifted off of the ground and made a single line, rolling into a hidden room with no door. As the part of the wall sealed itself, I walked over and grabbed myself a water bottle. I drank greedily as I exited my training room.

Cisco was still going on his rampage, "As badass as that last takedown was, Star Wars is a cultural icon! It's been around for practically forever and changed so many lives! You can't just diss Yoda or the light side like that. The movies were amazing and you can't forget the cartoons!"

"Ah ah, Star Trek has been around longer. And there's an actual science to it, so there may be a Starfleet someday. You can't really say the same thing about Star Wars, now can you?" I continued to tease Cisco, smile plastered on my face at our friendly banter.

"Regardless of which franchise is better, I am proud to say that you are improving very much Miss Steele. Same goes for you Mr. Allen. You've both managed to impress me more and more every week." Dr. Wells rolled over to Cisco and I, Barry trailing behind the man. My best friend and I locked eyes and beamed at each other at the praise.

Barry took a glimpse at the watch on his wrist, eyes widening as he started to rush around. "Hey, aren't we supposed to meet Iris at 7?"

"Yeah, why?" I asked, head tilted in slight confusion. My best friend paused in his zooming around the room to look at me and gesture to my body.

"It's 6:45. We gotta go, like _now_." I rolled my eyes at Barry's frantic tone.

"Relax, Barry. Super speed, remember? I'll go shower and get dressed, you wait here since you're already ready, okay?" I smiled calmly at the speedster before walking towards the showers.

* * *

"Regular movie scale, that was an 8. Zombie movie scale, it was like a 4. Tops." Barry spoke to Iris and I pointedly as we were leaving the theater. We strolled along the sidewalk casually.

I scoffed, "No way, it was at least a 6 on the zombie movie scale." My hands rested in the pocket of my jacket as my boots stepped silently along the path.

Iris raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow, "There's a zombie movie scale?"

"Oh yeah. Movies like _Zombieland_ and _Dawn of the Dead_ rank up at the top, while monstrosities like _World War Z_ are at the bottom. Factors like gore level, empathy for the main characters, weapons versatility, and zombie kill count are a big factor in determining where a movie goes on the scale." Barry and Iris gaped at me as I smiled sweetly, eyes crinkling, and walked forward. "It's practically a science."

"Uh… speaking of science, did you know that there are zombies that exist in nature?" Barry started excitedly as we all started walking at the same pace again. "There's this species of fungi that infects ants, causing the ants to attack plants that can release spores, which in turn effect new hosts— I'm going full nerd again, aren't I?"

Iris and I locked eyes briefly, before turning back to Barry and replying in unison. "Yep."

"But don't worry, it's adorable." I cooed fondly, crinkling my nose as Barry rolled his eyes playfully at me.

"Anyways, I am more amazed in the interesting as of late…" I sighed silently as Iris changed the topic to her newest obsession, the Streak.

"Because of the Streak thing?" Barry questioned, though he already knew the answer.

"He's out there. People are talking about him." Iris said firmly, popping a few more popcorn kernels into her mouth and chewing.

"How do you know he's a he? Maybe it's a she?" The brunette looked to me for help, but when all I gave was an unbelieving glance, she huffed and continued to make her case.

"It's a man, okay? You know I'm really kind of intuitive about this stuff. Plus, people are even saying that the Streak has a masked partner with powers too. Someone even posted a picture after being pulled from a car accident. It's a red and blue blur leaving the scene." Iris pulled out her phone, moving the screen in our direction "Here, what do you see?"

Eddie's face popped up, and Barry unhappily relayed the information to her. While Iris went to answer the call, I turned to Barry. "You know, you could make it a _little_ less obvious that you don't want Iris and Eddie to be together." Barry of course gaped and tried to deny it, but I wasn't having it. "Look, I know that you love her, and I know that seeing her with him is hard for you. Just know that she would be crushed if she knew that you didn't fully support her relationship with Eddie."

Barry looked up from his tennis shoes and smiled sadly, green eyes locking onto mine, "I promise you, I'm working on it." I took my hands out of my pockets and rested my hands gently on his upper arms.

"Just remember, I'm here for you, okay? Always." I gave a small, shy smile as Barry gave me a timid nod. Our private little moment was shattered by the shrill sound of Barry's phone ringing. He quickly jumped to answer it, putting the phone to his ear.

"Hello?" A beat of silence, then "Public indecency?"

Another beat. "Dog leash violation?"

Barry looked to Iris, then to me. I nodded, shooing Barry away with my hands. "I'll cover for you if Iris comes back before you do. Go on." I smiled once more at Barry before he raced off in a flash.

I heard distant police sirens as I stood all by my lonesome while Iris was still on the phone. Seconds later, Iris hung up the phone and my heart rate spiked for a second because Barry wasn't back yet. I calmed myself down because I had a backup plan. But suddenly, as soon as she turned around, I felt a gust of wind on my back, my red hair flying everywhere.

"Eddie says hi. What happened to your hair?" Iris questioned.

I huffed, blowing a few wayward strands out of my face, then used my hands to smooth back my curly mane. My eyes narrowed at Barry's look of innocence plastered on his face as I answered, "Sudden gust of wind."

"I didn't feel anything. Huh." Iris shrugged it off nonchalantly.

"I'm feeling kind of hungry, you guys wanna grab a bite?" Barry suggested.

Iris only looked half surprised, "After the Mongolian barbecue we had before the movie, and the extra-large popcorn you had at the movie? How are you not fat?"

"I've been… jogging." I snorted at Barry's play on words, revealing yet hiding his little secret. Both of my best friends looked at me confused, before I realized that they were wondering why I had made that sound.

"Oh! Nothing, I just remembered a funny line from the movie we just watched. Heh, what are we doing just standing here? Let's go get some burgers or something." My face started to turn red as I marched forward, trying to ease my sudden and unexpected awkward state.

* * *

The next day at work, I was just on my way back to my office from dropping some photo analyses off a Singh's desk, when I heard Paulson brag to his buddies about a perp that he supposedly caught yesterday.

"We cut him off at 8th. I mean, the perp was in the backseat before he even knew what happened." He held his arms out as if he owned the world, and my blood started to boil at the sight of him taking credit for Barry's hard work.

Joe walked up to the liar and shook his hand, saying "Congrats, Paulson, on that arrest last night. Hell of a job."

"You know, Paulson, I've been told before that my bullshit meter's pretty accurate." I narrowed my eyes at the officer. "I kind of have this running _streak_ going." I continued with a sarcastic smile, but stopped short when Barry put a hand on my arm and shook his head to the smallest degree. I exhaled roughly before glaring again at Paulson.

He averted his eyes from my glare and continued to showboat, "Come by later, Joe. I'll give you a driving lesson, okay?"

I growled in anger as Barry explained to Joe that it was him who stopped the perp, not Paulson. We all started walking up the stairs to our offices.

"I figured. I just didn't realize that you were helping people out for the glory."

"It's not like I want a museum built to my name. Keeping what Kate and I can do from Iris and everyone, it's harder than I thought." Barry's answer had a thick layer of guilt surrounding it.

"Well, we knew this wasn't gonna be easy Barry. That's what we signed up for." I pitched in an answer, hoping to placate my best friend's guilt and worry for the time being.

"Plus, it's safer that way." Joe added in with a nod. We had reached our separation point by then, so I waved goodbye, stepped into my office and threw myself into my work.

After looking through about 200 different photos and organizing them by case, body part, and priority, I was interrupted by a knock on my door.

"Come in." I answered in a neutral tone, still focused on a photo of a ligature mark at the base of a victim's neck.

"Hey, we've got multiple homicides. It's the Darbinyan crime family. We need you on the scene in 20." Eddie's voice and message registered to me, I snapped my head up to look at the man. Nodding, I gathered my usual gear, put on my CSI jacket and followed Eddie out into the hallway. Meeting Barry and Joe at the top of the staircase, the four of us traveled down and out of the station together.

* * *

As I took pictures of the victims' bodies, I overheard parts of Joe and Barry's conversation. The words "gas poisoning" and "metahuman" drifted my way, as I crouched down to snap another photo.

 _Click._ Another set of dead eyes were now on my camera's hard drive. I'd been doing this job for a few years now, and I've seen plenty, but I'll never get over looking into the cold, dead eyes of a criminal's latest victim.

When I first got the job, despite gore and horror coming with the job description, I used to have nightmares. Nightmares that included me standing on top of a large pile of corpses, their wide eyes following me everywhere. Piercing me with their stares. I usually wake up when one of them drags me into the middle of the pile, gasping for breath and in a cold sweat, shaking and terrified. But as I usually do, I left my drama at home and put on an indifferent mask at work. The images visit my dreams on occasion now, not a frequently as they used to. I've not told a soul about my night terrors.

Because we've all got jobs to do.

And I couldn't afford to not do this one.

"Kate. Hey, Kate. You there?" I snapped back into reality as I looked over at Joe and Barry. Their faces had buckets of concern splashed all over it, so I tried to appease them by acting as if I hadn't just been thinking about the morbid pictures that haunt my dreams. So I plastered on a smile and carried on.

"Looks like we've got another special friend on our hands, don't we Bear?" I got up from my crouch and walked over to the pair, camera in hand. "So far, these photos don't really show that they put up much of a fight. What do you think?"

"I think we're gonna need some backup on this." Joe pointed his pen between the three of us, and Barry and I nodded in agreement.

"You guys go ahead, I need to drop off these at the station first." I motioned to my camera and lens pack. Both men nodded as I exited the restaurant, going under the police tape and catching a cab back to the CCPD station.

* * *

"—is it physiological or psychological?"

"This individual can create a mental nexus using gaseous substances."

"You mean connect with gases on a molecular level? That is ridiculously cool."

I heard the voices of excitement explain enthusiastically as I walked down a hallway and into the cortex of STAR Labs.

"You got them excited about this new metahuman we're dealing with, didn't you?" I droned to Barry and crossed my arms, but my face conveyed that I was just teasing him. He smiled widely at me before turning to Joe to explain.

"They get really excited about this kind of stuff."

"The only thing I'm excited about is putting criminals behind bars. Except Iron Heights isn't exactly equipped to deal with these… metahumans." Joe stated in a serious tone.

Dr. Wells was quick to retaliate, "Well, I guess it's lucky that the ones that you've encountered so far are no longer with us." Behind him, I could see Cisco's eyes drift down a fraction. Whether it was in respect or condolences, I'll never know.

I ought to get better at this whole "eye reading" thing, right?

Meanwhile, Joe was trying to find a solution to our current dilemma. "Unless we're planning on executing every super-criminal we stop… you geniuses are gonna have to come up with a way to contain them."

Cisco's eyes gleamed in delight, "A metahuman prison. Sweet." I could practically see the gears turning in his head, already coming up with a million new ideas.

"Until we can figure out a way to remove their powers."

"There is one place here that could hold them." Dr. Wells and Caitlin's heads swiveled towards Cisco's direction, almost in sync.

A moment of silence, then Caitlin pushed on her disagreement. "You can't be serious. We haven't been down there since—" She stuttered for a moment, before protesting again. "It's cordoned off!"

But Dr. Wells seemed to agree with the former. "Cisco is right. It could be modified to work as a makeshift prison."

"What could?" Barry and I spoke in unison, before we looked at each other, startled.

"That's not creepy at all…" Cisco muttered just before Wells answered our question

"The particle accelerator."

I could practically hear the small gasp that came from Caitlin, as Wells' words made her ideas a reality. I now understood why she was so insistent on not working down there. Because it was where she lost her fiancé, Ronnie. I could see her eyes cloud over as Dr. Wells announced that we were all going down to the particle accelerator ring. It took a couple of tries, but she eventually pulled out of it.

"Dr. Snow? We're going down to the particle accelerator ring now." Dr. Wells started to wheel back from under the table and out of the room.

Barry cut in, "Actually, Dr. Wells, I could use Caitlin's help identifying the poison gas." I could see her shoulders slump in relief as she realized that she wouldn't have to go down to the place which I imagined haunts her as much as my nightmares haunt me. "If that's okay with you?"

Dr. Wells nodded and motion for me to follow he and Cisco, which I did. But before I left the room, I squeezed Barry's arm affectionately and he looked down at me, telling him with my eyes that I really appreciate what he'd done for Caitlin. My best friend was the sweetest person and I wouldn't trade him for the world.

I nodded to Caitlin as I left the room, following Dr. Wells and Cisco to the particle accelerator ring. I could feel the tensions rising as the three of us ventured down deeper into the halls of STAR Labs. We reached a particular hallway and both scientists paused for a moment, then turned and walked down the ramp leading to a door. I, of course, just followed them.

Cisco stepped over to a touchpad and slowly started entering in a keycode and eventually pressed a circle shaped button for a few seconds. The three of us watched as the doors of the accelerator ring finally opened with a dramatic electric hum.

Wells seemed to unlock first, "The copper in the tube is arranged to form cavities and we can use those cavities…" He wheeled forward under the hull and Cisco and I followed silently. "…as containment cells."

The air was dead silent for a moment as I looked down the gigantic walls of the failed particle accelerator. It had the feeling of a ghost town, and I could sense the loss and disappointment that echoes through this ring. Wells seemed a little more sullen as he continued his explanation.

"Of course, I'll have to design the cells to counteract metahuman abilities… but it might just work." His deep voice echoed throughout the huge space we stood in, and I got chills from the scale of it all. Suddenly, Wells' head popped up, as if he had a bright idea. He further explained, "But first, we have to decouple the injection system on the gantry level. I'll be right back." Then he suddenly backed up and wheeled out of the tube.

"Why don't I do that?" Cisco suddenly insisted, bringing a halt to his unusually quiet demeanor for the moment. Wells declined Cisco's offer, saying that he "needed the exercise" and exited. I could practically feel how uncomfortable Cisco was, so I tried to loosen up the moment with a joke, hoping to get some witty banter out of the engineer.

"If only I could understand what Wells was talking about, I might actually be of some help. This isn't really my field of specialty heh…" But of course my joke fell flat (like always) and I started to frown once I saw the faraway look in Cisco's eyes. It was the same cloudy expression that Caitlin had up in the cortex.

"Cisco, hey. Cisco! What's wrong?" I put a hand on Cisco's shoulder and shook him just the tinniest bit. The cloudy look on his face went away gradually, but the sullen expressions stayed. "Are you okay?"

"This is where is happened. This is where I killed Ronnie." I gasped in shock at first, but then I collected myself because there _had_ to be an explanation.

"What happened Cisco, what do you mean you 'killed Ronnie'?"

Cisco took a shaky breath before explaining to me what exactly happened, "It was the night of the particle accelerator explosion. We were all celebrating the success that we'd all worked so hard on, when in an instant everything was going wrong. Ronnie and I came down here to fix the core, but Ronnie insisted that he go inside to fix it himself because… well… he built the thing." Cisco chuckled humorously as a stray tear fell down his face. "He told me to lock the doors behind him after two minutes. And I did. We never saw him again. And it's my fault."

"It sounds to me like you were just following orders. Ronnie knew what he was doing, and he was willing to sacrifice his life to save yours and everyone else's. Cisco, it's not your f—" I tried to tell Cisco placatingly, but before I could finish, Dr. Wells interrupted us. We started walking back up to meet the Doctor, when he started talking to Cisco.

"It must be hard for you, coming back down here." While I had kept walking, I looked back to see that Cisco had paused. Right in front of Dr. Wells. "A lot happened that night. If you feel the need to talk, I—" But Cisco interrupted him.

"I was just thinking…" Cisco had the look on his face that I had spent years perfecting. The _I'm fine, I promise there's nothing wrong with me_ face. I knew one when I saw it. "… We need to nail those voltage calculations. One fault and the helium blowback could damage the mountings." Cisco continued past Dr. Wells and I as he basically ran out of the door, into the hallways, and back up into the cortex.

"Smart." Dr. Wells agreed as he stayed facing his greatest failure. I of course, just stood there, as I didn't really have a place down there.

"Yeah, I'm just… I'm gonna go. See you tomorrow, Dr. Wells!" I awkwardly said as I slowly exited out of the ring entrance and out of STAR Labs.

* * *

I needed a new pair of boots, since mine were about ready to fall apart at the seams. So I decided to go to the mall and scavenge a few stores to find the right pair.

When I finally found a great pair for a reasonable price at Central City Shoes (cliche name, I know, right?). I walked onto the elevator and waited as it traveled onto the second floor. A woman in a suit stepped on and smiled politely at me. I returned the smile as I pressed the close door button. When suddenly, a gloved hand stopped in between the doors and pried them open. A bald man stepped inside and got into the woman's face with a scary smile.

"Judge Howard? It's nice to see you again." He stated with a smirk. I looked at the woman's face which suddenly had a look of horror and disbelief plastered all over it as she said just two words.

"You died."

The man tilted his head creepily, "You say that like it was an accident." Then his head turned to face me, and I backed up as he looked me in the eye. "You wanna know what the last thing she said to me in the courtroom?"

I shook my head quickly, "Not really, no."

He turned his head back to face the Judge and leaned in as he said, "'May God have mercy on your soul.'" I saw him step forward, and I sprung into action.

Kicking the man in the side, I pressed the down button hoping to get us off of the elevator. He stood back up and I punched him, but he stood his ground as I stumbled _through_ him. As soon as he turned back into human form, he backhanded me. I hit the nearest glass wall before turning to face the madman.

"You know, what's one more casualty? I'm still getting what I want." He soon started to evaporate and turn green. My eyes widened as I felt the familiar tingling sensation behind my eyes, but I was soon distracted from that as I started choking. My eyes watered and I put a hand to my throat as my lungs screamed for air. Just as I was seeing black spots in my vision, the metahuman's face stopped right in front of me. I was leaning up against the glass doors of the elevator, trying to get away from him, when he smiled at me.

"Just for today, I'm gonna keep you alive. But only to deliver a message: I'm coming for them."

I managed to get enough oxygen in my lungs to ask, "Who's… 'them'?"

"Everyone responsible." He smiled deviantly and pushed past my face as I started to choke once again. As the glass doors opened and I collapsed to the ground, struggling to crawl away from the box that was almost the cause of my death, I saw a fraction of a crimson blur before unconsciousness finally…ironically… had mercy on me and took me under.

* * *

 **A/N: How'd you guys like my little Walking Dead tribute (if you can find it)? Just a teensy little insert, because I miss the show so much at the moment. I'm ready for season 7 already! I think that TWD is the reason why I'm not afraid to really beat up my OCs. It's a bad influence for me, but it makes for a better story, right?**

 **Anyways, sorry I took so long to update, I've had finals and many a things to cause an existential crisis. Like a real crisis, mental breakdown and all. I'll be really honest, life hasn't been all that gracious to me lately and I'm at that point where I'm questioning everything I'm doing, everything I am, and everything I'm going to do. Luckily, writing this story has been sort of an escape from my currently crappy reality.**

 **Thanks to all of you who favorite/follow/review. You all keep me going and inspire me to make my writing better. Thank you.**

 **Please review, I love to hear feedback from my readers (whether it be positive or negative). See you next update :)**


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: I own nothing Flash related. Absolutely nothing.**

* * *

 _"_ _And four plus seven is…?"_

 _"_ _Um… eleven!" Ella said proudly. I smiled at the seven year old and nodded._

 _"_ _Exactly. Good job! Alright, what's the next one?" Looking over her shoulder at her homework, I scanned the amount of problems she had next. But before we could move on, a shout from downstairs alerted us that our parents were home._

 _"_ _Katie! Ella! We're home! Could you both come downstairs please?" My heart instantly filled with dread at my dad's nickname for me that he used._

 _Walking towards the door, I yelled back. "Coming!" and turned to grab Ella's hand._

 _Ella stopped me before we could go downstairs though. "What do you think Mommy and Daddy want? He called you Katie, so it must be bad." I stared in shock at my sister. I almost couldn't believe that she picked up on the same cue that I did. But she always was a bright one, so it wasn't really surprising at all._

 _I knelt to my sister's level and looked her in the eye, "Hey, it's probably nothing. Don't worry, okay?" She nodded and I exhaled in relief. We both quickly ran downstairs, Ella beating me to hug Mom and Dad._

 _"_ _Daddy!" Ella squealed, running and jumping into his arms. He of course picked her up and squeezed her tight, kissing her forehead affectionately._

 _"_ _How is my Ella-bug?" My heart was already in my stomach, but it seemed to drop to the floor at those words. He hadn't used that nickname for Ella since she was five._

 _That's when I knew the conversation we were going to have was definitely not a good one._

 _I turned to Mom and hugged her, my face resting in her vibrant red hair that mine resembled so much. Everyone said that I was practically the spitting image of her— same sharp cheekbones, sloped nose, red hair, and brown eyes. But her hair practically tumbled in waves down her back, while I naturally had my dad's texture— curls galore._

 _"_ _We need to have a family meeting. Let's talk in the living room." I let go of my mother and looked at her, her eyes were practically glazed over. This wasn't like her at all._

 _We all went into the living room and sat in various spots. Mom and Dad sat on the loveseat, while Ella and I sat across from them on our couch._

 _Our parents looked at each other and seemed to have a silent conversation with each other before looking at each other._

 _"_ _Okay girls, we may have lied when we said that we were going grocery shopping today." Dad started off._

 _"_ _I figured as much, since you didn't have any bags with you when you came home." I quipped lightly, trying to lighten the mood for the inevitable blow that would come sooner or later. However the room stayed somber._

 _"_ _We went to see a doctor today."_

 _Ella instantly gasped, "Are we getting a brother? Or sister? I've always wanted a brother. I mean, I like Kate plenty, but a little brother would be cool too."_

 _Mom and Dad looked shocked at Ella's outburst. Dad smiled sadly, while Mom looked about ready to burst into tears at the innocent question from their youngest child._

 _"_ _No baby, we're not having another kid. I'm sorry." Mom's voice cracked as she let Ella down gently._

 _"_ _Oh." Ella looked a little downtrodden at the news._

 _"_ _Your mother… Your mom is… Mom is sick, kids." Dad seemed to struggle to get the words out. He looked like he was about to burst at the seams._

 _I froze at my dad's words. "Sick? Sick how?"_

 _Mom breathed out slowly, before seemingly composing herself and answering my question._

 _"_ _I have stage two breast cancer."_

Cancer.

 _The word bounced around in my head for what seemed to be years. I hadn't moved an inch, I didn't breathe. My world had stopped._

 _Of all the things in the universe to plague our family, cancer wasn't expected to be on the list. It was like someone had cursed us._

 _"—_ _I know this is going to be hard for your mother and for all of us. We just have to stick together."_

 _Suddenly, I snapped out of it. "We're gonna fight this, right? There's something we can do about this, there has to be."_

 _My parent's head turned to me. "Of course we're gonna fight this. Your mother starts chemotherapy treatment in a couple of weeks."_

 _I nodded, "What else can we do? I did a project on breast cancer for my biology class. I know there's the option of a mastectomy or—"_

 _"_ _Katie, even with your mother's income and mine combined, we wouldn't be able to afford the surgery. Which is why we're going with the chemo." I nodded in understanding, not wanting to make this more difficult by complaining or whining. "This also means that we're gonna have to make some changes around here in order to pay the hospital bills."_

 _"_ _What kind of changes?" Ella asked, having been quiet up to this point._

 _"_ _Well, we're gonna have to cut back on spending for things that we don't really need. We might have to sell some of our things as well. And Katie, I know that you're almost done with your freshman year of high school, we don't want to ask too much of you, but—"_

 _"_ _As soon as the school year's over, I'll find a job." I assured my parents, wanting to help in any way that I could._

 _"_ _No, no, you can keep whatever percentage of your wages that you want. John, this is too much to ask of her." My mom protested, but I stayed firm in my claims._

 _"_ _No, Mom. I'll do whatever I can to help. 75% of my paycheck will go towards your treatment. And I'll sell some of my clothes that don't fit anymore, and my old toys as well." My back was almost pin straight as I wanted to be taken seriously._

 _"_ _Yeah, I don't even want some of my Barbies anymore. We're here for you, Momma." Ella backed me up, adding a childish sort of humor to the room's atmosphere, loosening everyone up instantly._

 _My mom chuckled as tears ran down her cheeks, opening her arms for a hug. Ella and I ran towards our parents, making a large family hug on our loveseat._

 _"_ _We're gonna get through this." I said, and Mom's arms seemed to tighten around us even more at my statement._

 _"_ _Yes we are, baby. Yes, we are."_

* * *

My eyes opened slowly to the sound of beeps of a familiar EKG. That particular memory was a bittersweet one. Bitter because it was the start of a long, hard battle for my mother, but sweet because it brought our family closer together. The pain from that memory slowly faded as I became more aware of my surroundings. I started moving my fingers, only to feel something restricting my right hand. Looking over, I spotted a familiar mop of brown hair lying face down on the side of my bed, hand clutching mine for dear life.

"Hey, Barry. Bar—" As I tried to wake up my best friend, I started coughing frantically as my mouth and throat felt like the Sahara Desert. But it seems like my effort to wake Barry up weren't in vain, as he sprang up at the sound of my coughing and shifted to look me in the eye.

"Hey, Kate, I'm here. What do you need? What's wrong?"

I would've almost melted at his adorable rambling, but I felt like I had a dust storm in my chest, so I restrained myself. As I finally stopped coughing and managed to find a moment to breathe properly, I wheezed out one word.

"Water."

Barry's eyes widened as he smacked himself in the forehead. "Right! Barry, you idiot…" I felt a burst of wind on my face as he sped off and back, handing me a glass with nothing but a few drops of water on the inside.

Taking the glass and holding it up to his eye level, Barry's head looked behind him and back at me, where he smiled sheepishly before taking the glass from me. "Whoops." I took a peek around his form, where I saw a trail of water on the floor lined up in the direction that Barry came in.

"Maybe you'd be better bringing water to me at a human speed." I cringed at the sound of my voice, as it sounded like I had gravel stuck in my vocal cords.

"Yeah, probably…" Barry jogged off, but not before slipping on a bit of the water he spilled. He quickly caught himself and continued off, as I gave a dry giggle.

This time, Barry didn't come back alone. Caitlin followed behind him, touch pad and file in hand. Handing me my glass of water, I almost gulped it down until Caitlin advised me not to.

"Sips, Kate, sips. Don't gulp it down or you'll feel sick."

So I restrained myself from downing the entire contents of the glass and took small sips. My body started to cool down and I sighed at the content feeling my throat and mouth got from the water.

"Vital signs are normal, heart rate is back to normal… So is your blood pressure. It was almost scarily low when Barry first brought you in. This…gas-man… almost killed you. Luckily the elevator door opened just in time." Caitlin continued to tap various meters on her touch pad and the pad on the wall next to the EKG.

"We're just glad you're okay. You had us really scared there for a while." Barry piped up.

"I feel fine now, I promise." He seemed hesitant with my affirmation, but nodded in acceptance. "So, what'd I miss?"

"Not that much. Barry zoomed in with you in his arms, screaming for help. Then after you passed out, he got pissed at the meta, ran after him, came back with some of the gas in his lungs and a bit of blood on his face; and at that point we stuck him in another hospital bed and stabbed him in the chest with a giant needle. I also named him The Mist—that's his name, end of story." Cisco's words were practically mushed together as he walked in the room, lollipop hanging from his mouth. But I managed to get the gist of what he said.

"What?! You went after him?" I practically screeched.

Barry's shoulders slumped as he groaned, "Dude…" He gave Cisco a disbelieving look. Cisco's mouth formed an o shape as he seemed to recall something.

"Oh… right… We were supposed to keep all the details on the DL. Whoops haha." Cisco cringed before moving to help Caitlin with one of the machines I was still hooked up to.

"Barry, why would you risk yourself like that? Was it just to get a sample?" Barry stuttered trying to answer, but I didn't give him a chance to fully respond as I kept babbling. "You could've gotten some from me, you know. I was unconscious, a big needle wouldn't have been so bad. I just don't think—"

"I couldn't help it!" Barry finally exploded, stopping my rant entirely. After a beat of silence, he exhaled and continued in a more level voice. "He just made me so angry! Attacking you like that… I almost thought that I had lost you. Again." I tilted my head in understanding of my best friend's worry. "Seeing you fall out of that elevator door, I thought you were gone for sure."

"Nah. It's gonna take more than a toxic fart to end me, you hear Allen?" Barry chuckled at my normal placement of sarcasm, patting my hand as Caitlin ran up to my bedside and started taking out my IV and giving me instructions on how to take care of myself until I'm 100% better.

"—and you'll need to get a full eight hours of sleep a night. Drink tons of fluids, it'll help flush the rest of the poison out of your bloodstream. Your IV did most of the work, now it's up to you."

"Okay." I sat upright and swung my legs over the side of my bed. As soon as I was on my feet, I sighed and clapped my hands together. "Alright, I'm gonna go train."

But before I could even get over the threshold and into the cortex, a hand grabbed my arm. Looking back, I saw that it was Barry who was holding me back, another disbelieving look on his face.

"What? Kate, you just got off your IV. You were _poisoned_. I think what you need to do is go home and rest, drink lots of water like Caitlin said."

I rolled my eyes, but not maliciously. "No, what I _need_ to do is stop this guy. Before he gets his next target." Gently releasing myself from Barry's grasp, I walked to my normal training room and slipped on a different shirt.

"Actually… we kinda already stopped him…" Barry mentioned, hands in his pockets as he cringed as I slowly turned around to face the group.

"What? Aw man, I always miss the action." I humphed, temporarily put out. But I soon got over it and straightened up. "Oh well, I'm still training."

"You're actually letting her do this?" Okay, that was Caitlin.

"Not like we could stop her. Once she puts her mind to something, she doesn't stop until she's satisfied with the results." Barry. Ah, he knows me so well…

"That sounds like one of your basic super villain traits." Did Cisco just call me a villain? Or even worse, a _basic_ super villain?

"No, I think it's just called persistence."

"But just imagine Kate as a super villain. She could take down an entire room of guys with her bare hands! Is it wrong that I'm finding these thoughts kind of attractive?" Alright, this "whispering" was getting out of hand.

"I'm gonna become a super villain if you keep calling me one, Cisco." I paused in my current position, straightening my legs and standing upright.

I saw Cisco jump practically a foot in the air, screaming in a voice that didn't quite match his demeanor. He turned to give me a glance, then turned back to Caitlin and Barry, who were snickering at Cisco's jumpiness.

"Does she have super hearing too?" Cisco whispered harshly.

"No, you just whisper loudly." He jumped once again as I fell into step right next to him.

" _Aye dios mio!_ We need to put a bell on you. Like, right now." Lighthearted laughter rang throughout the cortex at his exclamation.

* * *

The next couple of weeks were pretty quiet, we didn't have any major metahuman villains to catch. My normal day job was running smoothly, Barry and I would patrol the streets at night (sometimes with him carrying me, other times I'd run right beside him).

On a random Friday, I was in my office doing another analysis on an attempted truck robbery scene that I'd taken earlier that day. Getting up and putting my findings in a file, I walked over to Barry's lab to drop it off on his desk. As I entered the room, I stopped short at the sight of a woman with bright blond hair and a bright pink dress and white blazer standing in the middle of Barry's lab. The stranger's hair was pulled up into a ponytail and she had thin glasses perched on her nose.

"Umm…" I started awkwardly.

"Oh, hi! You're not Barry. I'm not breaking in to do anything bad, I promise. I didn't even break in at all! Joe let me in…" The woman started to ramble, fidgeting with her hands as she tried to explain herself. "I'm Felicity Smoak. A friend of Barry's." Her rambling was kind of adorable, to be honest.

I suddenly broke out of my reverie to shake the beautiful woman's hand. "Hi, you're gorgeous! I mean, I'm Katherine Steele. But you can call me Kate." I giggled at the woman.

"Oh, so you're Kate! Barry talked about you a _lot_ back in Starling City." Her hair practically flowed from her ponytail and I was almost blinded by her captivating smile. Then her words finally processed mentally, and my expression went from overly chipper to confused.

"Really? He did?" Felicity nodded.

"Yeah, he said such great things about you and Iris. We worked together on one of Barry's cases."

"Oh, yeah! He told me a little about that. I hear you're an absolute genius with computer sciences." I dropped the files on Barry's desk and initiated a conversation with Felicity.

"It's no big deal, I mean, I love science just like every other scientist. Right? Because we love science or else we wouldn't do it for a living." I understood about half of what I could catch.

I chuckled, "Yeah… I think?" I opened my mouth to say something else, but stopped when I heard Barry coming down the hall.

"You never know what weirdos are trolling around on the internet!" Barry and Iris stepped into the lab, but didn't notice both Felicity and I until the former spoke up.

"I can vouch for that." There was a quiet clacking as Felicity stepped towards the pair in her heels. "The internet is full of weirdoes, and nerd rage. Lots and lots of nerd rage."

Barry's eyes widened as he set sight on the beautiful blonde, then he chuckled. After a half awkward pause, Felicity decided to take initiative and introduce herself to Iris.

Felicity put her hand out to Iris, "Hi. Felicity Smoak."

"Iris West." She replied with a huge smile, shaking Felicity's hand. "I see you've already met Kate."

"Barry Allen." Our boy wonder said in a daze, but then snapped out of it once he caught wind of what came out of his mouth. "But all of you already knew that. Felicity is—"

Iris interrupted Barry's introduction by stating what we already knew. "The girl that you met in Starling City. The computer-er, right?" Felicity smiled and nodded.

"You two worked on one of Barry's unexplainable cases." I chipped in.

Felicity chuckled lightly, and turned to me. "Which was, in the long run, _definitely_ explainable." She stepped back and turned around to point up at the ceiling.

As she asked if the lightning came through the glass on the roof, I turned to Barry and Iris and mouthed _"Oh my God, she's gorgeous!"_ to my two best friends.

Barry looked between all four of us, then breathed out a short reply. "Yeah."

"Why don't we go take a walk, Barry? You could show me Central City's coolest landmarks." Felicity suggested. I nodded, and pushed Felicity towards Barry.

"Absolutely! We'll meet you guys later, okay? Have fun! But not too much fun." I winked at our new blonde friend and watched her and Barry walk out of the lab. I sighed and turned to push Barry's desk chair in. Turning around, I saw Iris with a cocked eyebrow and hand on her hip.

"Okay, what was that?"

"What was what?" I asked confused.

"You basically throwing Felicity and Barry together. I thought you'd be a little jealous of her showing up to be honest."

I scoffed, "Jealous? Yeah, I am. Of _Barry_. I mean, have you seen Felicity? She's freaking gorgeous! And she's super smart and kind and kind of adorable, if you didn't already notice. I mean, she's perfect for Barry." By the time I was done with my rant, we were back in my office and I was gathering up my supplies for the day. Getting my coffee cup, I started to take a sip.

"I meant that you might be jealous of Felicity because you like Barry." My eyes widened and I spit out the rest of the frappachino I was sipping on, getting a napkin to wipe the dribbles of coffee off of my chin.

"You think I _what_?" I balled up the napkin and threw it away as Iris explained herself.

"You. Like. Barry. Don't try and deny it, I know you, Kate. You may not see it now, but you're falling for him. Or you've already fallen for him."

"Okay, first of all, Barry and I are just friends. He could never see me that way. Second, did you see the way that he looked at Felicity? He's practically her dream girl. They're perfect for each other. Third, I DON'T LIKE HIM."

"But Kate..!" Iris tried to continue, but I stopped her by shoving the both of us out of my office door, and locking it shut.

"Nope. We are not having this discussion. See you later!" And I bolted out of the station and to STAR Labs to train.

* * *

"HYAH! HUH HUH HYAH! HAH. HAH. HYAH." I brought my leg down from it's high kick position, finishing the martial arts drill set on the dummy, and moved to cool down. I was currently sweating my butt off in a black sports bra and sofee shorts. I had black bandages wrapped around my hands to protect my knuckles and palms from cuts and abrasions. Stepping out of my training circle, I walked to my water bottle and started to chug it.

As I walked into the cortex barefoot, I was met with the sight of Barry showing Felicity the cortex. Caitlin and Cisco rushed over to do some damage control because Barry seemingly just blew our whole operation for no reason.

"It is, of course, so wonderful to see you again, Felicity. Although I'm just wondering how much of our operation she needs to know about?" Caitlin worded hesitantly, hinting to Barry about his double life. But Felicity started to reassure us that our secret was safe.

"Don't worry, I'm really good at keeping secrets."

"Yeah, Felicity works for the Arrow." Barry's attempt to back the beautiful scientist up backfired however, judging by the burning glare she gave him not seconds after he said it. Cisco worded his approval immediately.

"Wow, nice job Bear." I chipped in, before Felicity lightly scolded him.

"…And you, apparently, are not."

Cisco rounded the desk, waving his twirler wildly. "Now it's all making sense. You know who the Arrow is." But then he stopped short of himself. "Wait. Do you know who the Arrow is?"

Both Felicity and Barry obviously knew who he was, but opted not to tell us because they immediately set into an awkward silence slash mumbling moment. Then Felicity found the right words to say.

"Let's just say that my team has a similar setup, but with more pointy objects." Cisco nodded slyly. All of our heads turned to the cortex entrance as Dr. Wells welcomed Felicity to the facility. At the same time, he listed all of her credentials and achievements that she's done so far, and it's quite an impressive list.

"…And I foresaw great things in you." Felicity looked over the moon at the compliment from the doctor. Barry quickly nudged her shoulder, bringing her attention back to the speedster.

"Speaking of great things…. wanna see something cool?" He smirked as Felicity nodded. "Alright, follow me."

We all walked over to the treadmill room as Barry got his running shoes on and instructed Felicity to stand at the window and watch him run. As he started to get faster and faster, sparks started to trail behind him every time he waved his arms. Pretty soon, he got into a grove and just kept running.

Felicity stayed near the window and watched in pure fascination at the unique sight in front of her. But I could tell something was bothering her.

"How fast can he run?"

"He hasn't reached his top speed yet, theoretically speaking." Dr. Wells answered.

"So is he really okay?" There was a touch of concerning the question, and I had a feeling that she wasn't talking about his health.

"His heart range is within normal level for him." Caitlin pitched in, eyes on her screen showing his vitals.

But Felicity shook her head and persisted. "No. I mean, the lightning bolt changed him. Do any of you really know how much?"

Cisco decided to add in on this inquiry, "We know a fair amount."

"He's managing pretty well so far. Hurdling over every obstacle that tries to get in his way." I smiled as I tried to placate Felicity's worries.

"Yeah, _so far_. If everything about him is sped up, does that mean he's gonna age faster?" After that question, she started rambling about a lot more theories that I hadn't even thought of in my mind. Aging? Turning to dust? This is a whole other field that we'd have to tackle. Unless, Dr. Wells already had the answers?

Because it seems like he did, judging by his answer.

"Everything we do here at S.T.A.R. Labs is to protect Barry Allen. Trust us, Felicity. He's in good hands." Felicity seemed to calm down at his answer, her shoulders loosening up and her hands stopped fidgeting.

"Five bucks says that tries to impress her by running backwards." I muttered to Cisco. He turned ever so slightly in my direction and smirked.

"Oh, you're on. He would never do—"

"Hey! You wanna see how fast I can run backwards?" Right on time, Barry.

Not even 5 seconds after he started running backwards, he slipped and was thrown off the Cisco'd treadmill, flying into a stack of boxes right behind him.

"Don't worry. He heals quickly too." Caitlin chirped as chairs squeaked and wheels turned to go assist Barry. But an alerted clearing of the throat rang throughout the room.

Following a defeated sigh, a wrinkled 5 dollar bill was smacked into a waiting palm.

* * *

 **A/N: Ha! You'd probably thought that I'd disappeared, didn't you? I'm still kicking—or typing? Well, I'm not giving up on this story. Not at all. I have TONS planned. Especially now that season two is over and I have an exact notion of where the show is gonna go in season three (no spoilers here folks). I now have a solid plan of how I'm gonna execute this story in the future. And who else is mega excited that Tom Felton is joining the show in season three? I definitely am. I love Tom's work, he's amazing.**

 **Also, I may be skipping over some episodes, mostly because I think that the filler episodes won't really help the plot of this story progress (unless I really like the story of an episode or I can find a way to make an episode give Kate more depth). Because as you can see in this chapter, I had NO clue as to how to wrap up The Mist plotline. I tried several different things, none of them worked, so I used a cop out ending (I know, I'm sorry). I feel like Kate is a bit 2D at the moment, and these flashbacks (like the one in this chapter) should give us a little insight into her backstory and how she became the person she is today.**

 **Last news, and probably the most important, I'm planning and currently writing a spin-off/side piece to this story! It's going to be multi-chapter, and I know for a fact that it is _not_ going to be as episode-centric as this story is. I'm not going to reveal exactly who it's based around just yet, but it is a Flash Character/OC. Here's a hint if you want one: taillights.**

 **Anyways, sorry for the long, boring note. PLEASE REVIEW- your reviews mean the world to me and give me more inspiration to write! See you guys next update :)**


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